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Temporary streams in temperate zones: recognizing, monitoring and restoring transitional aquatic-terrestrial ecosystems

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posted on 2017-08-10, 08:16 authored by Rachel Stubbington, J. England, Paul WoodPaul Wood, Catherine E. Sefton
Temporary streams are defined by periodic flow cessation, and may experience partial or complete loss of surface water. The ecology and hydrology of these transitional aquatic-terrestrial ecosystems have received unprecedented attention in recent years. Research has focussed on the arid, semi-arid, and Mediterranean regions in which temporary systems are the dominant stream type, and those in cooler, wetter temperate regions with an oceanic climate influence are also receiving increasing attention. These oceanic systems take diverse forms, including meandering alluvial plain rivers, ‘winterbourne’ chalk streams, and peatland gullies. Temporary streams provide ecosystem services and support a diverse biota that includes rare and endemic specialists. We examine this biota and illustrate that temporary stream diversity can be higher than in comparable perennial systems, in particular when differences among sites and times are considered; these diversity patterns can be related to transitions between lotic, lentic, and terrestrial instream conditions. Human impacts on temperate-zone temporary streams are ubiquitous, and result from water-resource and land-use-related stressors, which interact in a changing climate to alter natural flow regimes. These impacts may remain uncharacterized due to inadequate protection of small temporary streams by current legislation, and hydrological and biological monitoring programs therefore require expansion to better represent temporary systems. Novel, temporary-stream-specific biomonitors and multi-metric indices require development, to integrate characterization of ecological quality during lotic, lentic, and terrestrial phases. In addition, projects to restore flow regimes, habitats, and communities may be required to improve the ecological quality of temporary streams.

Funding

We thank the British Ecological Society Aquatic Group and Nottingham Trent University, respectively, for funding and hosting a meeting on temporary rivers and streams in June 2016.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water

Volume

4

Issue

4

Pages

e1223 - e1223

Citation

STUBBINGTON, R. ... et al, 2017. Temporary streams in temperate zones: recognizing, monitoring and restoring transitional aquatic-terrestrial ecosystems. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 4 (4), pp. e1223-e1223.

Publisher

Wiley © The Authors

Version

  • NA (Not Applicable or Unknown)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication date

2017

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Wiley under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

2049-1948

Language

  • en

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