In the context of a project aiming at assessing the environmental flow of a major Greek river, I would be very interested to know if there are papers dealing with threshold values of water velocity and water depth for aquatic and riparian plant species, preferably for Mediterranean and temperate rivers.
Hello Li and thanks for the answer.
Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough. My intention was to correlate river water depth with riparian woody vegetation, as it is a significant driver of underground water table level, which greatly impacts woody vegetation, at least in arid and semi-arid environments.
For velocity, I was intending to correlate it with submerged macrophytes presence.
Kind regards,Giorgos.
Typically, during assessing the environmental flow of a regulated river, many projects are dealing with fish, especially those can migrate from the downstream to upstream or those sensitive to river characteristics (substrate, flow, etc). This situation, more concentrations are on the construction of shelters for fish, water area controlling, etc.
Since you are focusing on riverine wood vegetation and submerged macrophytes. I did heard research on the quantitive relationship between water velocity or water depth and submerged macrophytes. But I did get information about the specific threshold values.
I am finding the research paper on the quantitive relationship between water velocity or water depth and submerged macrophytes. Once got it, I will tell you the paper's title.
Best wishes!
Water depth limits are directly related to the clarity of water. Several papers have been published on this topic using both Secchi disk transparency and light extinction coefficients and maximum depth of plant colonization. While most have been done for lakes, the same principle should apply.
Hi everybody and thanks for the answers,
I was looking for papers like this:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eduardo_Gonzalez23/publication/227759844_Hydrologic_thresholds_for_riparian_forest_conservation_in_a_regulated_large_Mediterranean_river/links/004635286f6f6b1337000000.pdf
, which a colleague provided.
Cui, thanks for the contribution, the paper seems really interesting.
John, you make a good point, but I am also interested in the velocity thresholds that aquatic vegetation can withstand in lotic environments.
Best regards.
Article Hydrologic thresholds for riparian forest conservation in a ...
I am 5.5 years late, but better late than never. Either I am unpantied (yes) or research related to this topic goes slow. Biggs (1996) mentioned some approximated "arbitrary" ranges of 0.3-0.7. However, I applied this on a dataset and came to 0.25-0.8. So, its not to far off. Chambers et al. (1991) shows a linear relationship, so a thresholds is not really present. I think they measured biomass (not sure anymore). Presence-absence gives a better view on this I guess. Kemp et al. (1999) also gave some ideas about "funtional habitats" (e.g. mosses, emergent plants) in relation to depth and flow velocity. Of course, we cannot forget Haslam (1978), although no thresholds are given and the book is repetitive it is an extremely nice reference work (hard to get though). Also Madsen (2001) gives a really straight to the point descriptions on the how/what versus aquatic plants. Anyhow, there is a lot of descriptive work on plant resistance or dispersal, and especially quantitative hydrological resistance (engineering of course) in relation to flow velocity, but no really quantitative work focused on thresholds/ranges of species/groups occurrence in relation to flow velocity.
P.S. You have some more information on this?
Biggs, B.J.F., 1996. Hydraulic habitat of plants in streams. Regul. Rivers Researrch Manag. 12, 131–144 (2-3). https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1646(199603)12:2/33.0.CO;2-X
Chambers, P.A., Prepas, E.E., Hamilton, H.R., Bothwell, M.L., 1991. Current Velocity and Its Effect on Aquatic Macrophytes in Flowing Waters. Ecol. Appl. 1, 249–257. https://doi.org/10.2307/1941754
Kemp, J.L., Harper, D.A.T., Giuseppe, C.A., 1999. Use of ‘functional habitats’ to link ecology with morphology and hydrology in river rehabilitation. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst. 9, 159–178. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0755(199901/02)9:13.0.CO;2-M
Haslam, S.M., 1978. River plants: The macrophytic vegetation of watercourses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Madsen, J.D., Chambers, P.A., James, W.F., Koch, E.W., Westlake, D.F., 2001. The interaction between water movement, sediment dynamics and submersed macrophytes. Hydrobiologia 444, 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017520800568
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