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Krajenbrink et al._2019_Science of the Total Environment.pdf (1.03 MB)

Macroinvertebrate community responses to river impoundment at multiple spatial scales

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-10-18, 13:03 authored by Henk Krajenbrink, M.C. Acreman, Michael J. Dunbar, David M. Hannah, Cedric L.R. Laize, Paul WoodPaul Wood
River impoundment by the construction of dams potentially modifies a wide range of abiotic and biotic factors in lotic ecosystems and is considered one of the most significant anthropogenic impacts on rivers globally. The past two decades have witnessed a growing body of research centred on quantifying the effects of river impoundment, with a focus on mitigating and managing the effects of individual large dams. This study presents a novel multi-scale comparison of paired downstream and control sites associated with multiple water supply reservoirs (n = 80) using a spatially extensive multi-year dataset. Macroinvertebrate community structure and indices were analysed in direct association with spatial (e.g. region) and temporal variables (e.g. season) to identify consistent patterns in ecological responses to impoundment. Macroinvertebrate communities at monitoring sites downstream of water supply reservoirs differed significantly from those at control sites at larger spatial scales, both in terms of community structure and taxa richness. The effect was most significant at the regional scale, while biogeographical factors appeared to be important drivers of community differences at the national scale. Water supply reservoirs dampened natural seasonal patterns in community structure at sites downstream of impoundments. Generally, taxonomic richness was higher and %EPT richness lower at downstream sites. Biomonitoring indices used for river management purposes were able to detect community differences, demonstrating their sensitivity to river regulation activities. The results presented improve our understanding of the spatially extensive and long-term effects of water supply reservoirs on instream communities and provide a basis for the future implementation of mitigation measures on impounded rivers and heavily modified waterbodies.

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC - grant number NE/L002493/1) and HJK acknowledges the support of Research Studentship Award from Central England NERC Training Alliance (CENTA).

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Science of the Total Environment

Citation

KRAJENBRINK, H.J. ... et al, 2018. Macroinvertebrate community responses to river impoundment at multiple spatial scales. Science of the Total Environment, 650 (2), pp.2648-2656.

Publisher

Elsevier © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

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

Acceptance date

2018-09-20

Publication date

2018-09-27

Notes

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

ISSN

0048-9697

Language

  • en