2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

<< BACK TO AGENDA

5/24/2018 | 3:15 PM - 3:30 PM | THE LONGITUDINAL IMPLICATIONS OF ABRUPT RIPARIAN CHANGES: A CASE STUDY FROM BRAZIL | 310 A

THE LONGITUDINAL IMPLICATIONS OF ABRUPT RIPARIAN CHANGES: A CASE STUDY FROM BRAZIL

Contemporary riparian corridors are often a patchwork of croplands, pastures, and forests that often have discrete boundaries. We hypothesized that abrupt riparian boundaries would be blurred in the stream channel due to downstream transport and transformation, effectively creating downstream 'shadows' of the upstream riparian conditions. To test this hypothesis, we sampled sites along 1050m of a headwater stream that traversed a discrete transition from forest to pasture. We quantified canopy cover, sediment size, and algal and invertebrate standing stocks at each site. A threshold modeling approach was used to examine the displacement of these variables downstream of the transition. Alternative models were tested and inverse estimation was applied to describe shifts in each variable. We observed a rapid, sigmoidal shift in canopy cover downstream of the forest boundary. Downstream increases in chlorophyll-a concentrations and grazing invertebrates were less abrupt and significantly displaced downstream relative to changes in canopy cover. Invertebrate abundance and richness decreased downstream of the forest to pasture transition and continued to change over the entire pasture reach. We discuss how these results can be used to quantitatively link the value of riparian restoration to its longitudinal dimension.

Restoration
Landscape
Watershed

Presentation:
This presentation has not yet been uploaded.

Handouts:
Handout is not Available

Transcripts:
CART transcripts are NOT YET available, but will be posted shortly after the conference

Presenters/Authors

Steven Thomas (), School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, sthomas5@unl.edu;