The Biology and Ecology of Streams and Rivers

Abstract

A major textbook on running waters, promoting understanding of the nature of rivers as ecosystems, and detailing the biodiversity and natural history of their biota. The book takes a primarily biological approach to river ecology, dealing with scientific questions about rivers but referring throughout to possible applications and approaches to management. The notion of a habitat templet refers to the suite of environmental factors that face lotic organisms and the adaptations and traits that enable their survival in such challenging environments. How does the complex, patchy nature of whole-river networks impinge on the population dynamics of lotic organisms and the nature of communities? Species interactions and food web linkages determine the flow of energy and material through communities and lead on to the ecosystem processes of river metabolism (the balance of whole-river primary production and community respiration) and the ecology of nutrients. The book stresses river systems as ‘open’ ecosystems, exchanging energy and materials with the land and with downstream systems. How can rivers be a sustainable part of the natural capital on which we all depend? In a final chapter the book takes a forward-looking view of river ecology, which is progressively devoted to applied questions. The Biology and Ecology of Streams and Rivers seeks to provide knowledge and understanding necessary for their, and our, future. We need to appreciate ‘what rivers do for us’ and reverse the deterioration of running waters in an increasingly thirsty, hungry and changing world.