Studying the influence of streamside wet areas - stream indicator results

Riparian zones contain areas of strong hydrological connectivity between land and stream, referred to as variable source areas (VSAs), and are considered biogeochemical control points. However, little is known about whether VSAs influence stream communities and whether this connectivity is affected by forest management. To address this, we used multiple biotic and abiotic indicators to: 1) examine the influence of VSAs on riparian vegetation and stream ecosystems by comparing VSA and non-VSA reaches; and 2) explore how forest management may affect the influence of VSAs on stream ecosystems.

Attached are the results for the abiotic and biotic stream-indicators we measured in 7 streams in northern New Brunswick (Canada). In each stream we sampled a VSA and a non-VSA site (14 sites in total). Abiotic indicators include water chemistry and dissolved organic matter quality, which were sampled three different times. Biotic indicators include: a) leaf decomposition, which was calculated by incubating leaf packs in the streams and measuring mass loss, b) composition and function of microbial communities growing on leaf pack biofilms, c) composition and function of benthic macroinvertebrate communities collected by electroshocking, and d) biomass of algae and biofilm, which was calculated by deploying tiles in streams and measuring growth.

We detected some significant differences between VSA and non-VSA reaches in the riparian vegetation (greater understory and lower tree density) and stream ecosystem indicators (greater dissolved organic matter aromaticity, microbial biomass, peroxidase activity and collector-gatherer density, and lower dissolved organic carbon concentrations, algal biomass and predatory macroinvertebrate density), which suggests that VSAs may create a more heterotrophic ecosystem locally. However, we show some evidence that forest management activities (specifically, road density) can alter the influence of VSAs and eliminate the differences observed at lower forest management intensities, and that the most hydrologically-connected areas seem more sensitive to disturbance.

The research resulting from this data is reported in: Erdozain, M., Emilson, C., Kreutzweiser, D., Kidd, K., Mykytczuk, N., Sibley, P. (in press). Forest management influences the effects of streamside wet areas on stream ecosystems. Ecological Applications.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.17632/rd7tc8tys9.2
PID https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-yt-tlan
Metadata Access https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:easy.dans.knaw.nl:easy-dataset:156284
Provenance
Creator Erdozain, M
Publisher Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)
Contributor Maitane Erdozain
Publication Year 2019
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Other