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Does adding wood to agricultural streams enhance biodiversity? An experimental approach

journal contribution
posted on 2007-01-01, 00:00 authored by Rebecca LesterRebecca Lester, W Wright, M Jones-Lennon
Riparian clearing and the removal of wood from channels have affected many streams in agricultural landscapes. As a result, these streams often have depauperate in-stream wood loads, and therefore decreased habitat complexity and lower levels of in-stream biodiversity. The introduction of wood was investigated as a possible rehabilitation technique for agricultural streams. Wood was re-introduced to eight streams in two separate high-rainfall, intensively grazed regions of Victoria, Australia and the effect on aquatic macroinvertebrate communities was measured. The addition of wood increased overall family richness and the richness of most functional feeding groups occupying edge and benthic habitats within the stream. Wood addition led to less overlap between benthic and edge macroinvertebrate communities, suggesting increased habitat heterogeneity within the stream ecosystem. Of all sampled habitats, wood supported the greatest density of families and was colonised by all functional feeding groups. Wood habitats also had the highest overall richness and supported the most taxa that were sensitive to disturbance. These findings suggest that re-introducing wood to agricultural streams is an appropriate rehabilitation technique where those streams are affected by reduced habitat complexity. Additional work is needed to confirm these findings over larger spatial and temporal scales.

History

Journal

Marine and freshwater research

Volume

58

Pagination

687 - 698

Publisher

CSIRO Publishing

Location

Collingwood, Vic.

ISSN

1323-1650

eISSN

1448-6059

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

CSIRO 2007