EARLY HEARING DETECTION AND INTERVENTION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
MARCH 2-5, 2021

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5/22/2019 | 9:30 AM - 9:45 AM | LOSS OF POTENTIAL AQUATIC-TERRESTRIAL SUBSIDIES ALONG THE MISSOURI RIVER FLOODPLAIN | 151 ABC

LOSS OF POTENTIAL AQUATIC-TERRESTRIAL SUBSIDIES ALONG THE MISSOURI RIVER FLOODPLAIN

The floodplains of large rivers have been heavily modified due to riparian development and channel modifications, both of which can eliminate shallow off-channel habitats. We used field collections of insect emergence, historical mapping, and statistical modeling to estimate the loss of insect emergence due to channel modifications along 1566 km of the Missouri River (USA) floodplain, between 1890 and 2012. Annual production of emerging aquatic insects declined by 36,000 kgC between 1890 and 2012, due to the loss of surface area in backwaters and related off-channel habitats. Under a conservative assumption that riparian birds obtain 10% of their annual energy budget from adult aquatic insects, this amount of insect loss would be enough to subsidize approximately 1,900,000 riparian woodland birds annually. Most of the loss is concentrated in the lower reaches of the Missouri River, which historically had a wide floodplain, a meandering channel, and a high density of off-channel habitats, which were substantially reduced due to channelization and bank stabilization. Our results indicate that the loss of off-channel habitats in large river floodplains has the potential to substantially affect energy availability for riparian insectivores.

Floodplain
Invertebrate
Landscape

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Presenters/Authors

Jeff Wesner (), University of South Dakota, Jeff.Wesner@usd.edu;