Consistency and sensitivity of stream periphyton community structural and functional responses to nutrient enrichment

Nelson, Craig E.; Bennett, Danuta M.

doi:10.1890/12-0295.1

Cited by 32 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Sanderson et al (2009) showed that 31.5% of the streams they studied showed no nutrient limitation on periphyton production using the same methods we used. Similarly Nelson et al (2013) found in one of two ecoregions in California they studied, increasing nutrient content did not result in increased chlorophyll a production. The potential causes for the lack of response to increased nutrients could be sufficient nutrients in the stream, other limiting factors such as light, temperature, or disturbance and the presence of invertebrate grazers.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

The influence of riparian vegetation and season on stream metabolism of Valley Creek, Minnesota

Hornbach

Beckel

Hustad

et al. 2015

Journal of Freshwater Ecology

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Climate change will undoubtedly influence stream ecosystems by affecting water temperature, discharge, and riparian vegetation phenology. It has been suggested that increasing the extent of riparian buffers may help to mitigate these impacts and contribute to ecosystem resilience. Measures of stream metabolism are one way to examine the changes in ecosystem function as they respond to climate change and management strategies used to respond to these impacts. In this study we examine the influence of riparian vegetation (open vs. forest) and season on ecosystem metabolism in a small stream in MN, USA. The stream was heterotrophic regardless of the type of riparian vegetation but the presence of a forested buffer depressed gross primary production (GPP) and also resulted in lower (less negative) ecosystem respiration (ER) and net ecosystem production (NEP). We also found significant daily and seasonal variation in GPP, ER, and NEP. Stream metabolism was more variable in the fall than in the summer. The study design was complicated by the fact that there were differences in groundwater dynamics between the two locations; the forested location was a losing stream while the open location was a gaining stream. Despite the fact that groundwater input likely influenced the oxygen dynamics of the open location, the impact of the forest buffer outweighed the impact of groundwater. The presence of a forested riparian corridor resulted in decreased GPP likely through the attenuation of light. The low O 2 groundwater input at the open location likely biased measures of ER and NEP. Modifying stream corridors with increased forest vegetation to offset the impacts of climate change will likely result in less in-stream primary production and a shift to a more heterotrophic system. This shift will undoubtedly influence many ecosystem functions in-stream systems.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

The influence of riparian vegetation and season on stream metabolism of Valley Creek, Minnesota

Hornbach

Beckel

Hustad

et al. 2015

Journal of Freshwater Ecology

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“…The positive relationship between resource availability and measures of food web complexity (e.g., connectance and levels of omnivory; Supporting Information Appendix F) aligns with theoretical predictions of adaptive foraging (Uchida et al ). Specifically, abundant resources can promote higher biomasses in a wide range of potential prey items (e.g., periphyton, algivorous primary consumers; Cardinale et al ; Nelson et al ), thus facilitating adaptive prey‐switching ( sensu Uchida et al ) evident in higher densities of trophic interactions (i.e., connectance) with prey of varying trophic levels (i.e., degree of omnivory). In bridging our empirical observations with food web theory, the findings presented here imply that resource availability favors greater structural complexity by facilitating adaptive feeding strategies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bottom‐up influences on tropical freshwater food web structure support the “environmental filtering” hypothesis

Liew

Jardine

Lim

et al. 2018

Limnology & Oceanography

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Studies of ecosystem functions are gaining traction in the scientific community along with a growing consensus that losses in ecosystem functions have widespread consequences. Food webs, which are networks comprising all trophic interactions (represented by links) between taxa present in a community (represented by nodes), are important aspects of ecosystem functioning, yet a clear understanding of the factors and mechanisms influencing their assembly and structure is lacking. In our study, we addressed this fundamental question by investigating the respective roles of (1) environmental filtering and (2) biotic filtering, in governing food web structure. We did this by assessing the relationship between the network structure of five high‐resolution empirical tropical food webs and associated environmental and biotic covariates. Our data suggest that only environmental filtering is important in shaping food webs. Further, we found that the underlying ecological mechanism is a function of bottom‐up influences comprising resource levels, and to a lesser degree, resource type (i.e., terrestrial organic matter) available. Specifically, our data suggest high‐nutrient environments favor greater food web complexity. In the general context of community assembly, our findings add to existing knowledge of the process by demonstrating that environmental conditions previously shown to influence species assemblages can also drive trends in prevailing species interactions.

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“…There is general agreement that a good indicator will consistently detect change across space and time, but will be sufficiently sensitive to respond to changes in environmental factors (Cottingham and Carpenter, 1998; Nelson et al, 2013). The sensitivity of diatoms has been confirmed by the significant relationships between measured proximate environmental variables and diatom indices in this study (Table 3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benthic Diatom Based Indices for Water Quality Assessment in Two Subtropical Streams

et al. 2017

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Benthic diatoms have been universally used as indicators to assess water quality in lotic ecosystems. However, most diatom-based indices developed in Europe have not been widely used or tested in other continents such as Asia or Oceania. This study compared the performance of 14 widely-applied diatom indices in assessing ecological conditions in subtropical streams in South East Queensland (SEQ) in Australia and in the upper Han River in China. Most water quality variables in the upper Han River including dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total nitrogen (TN), and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) had strong relationships with at least one diatom index, with the exception of IDAP (Index Diatom Artois-Picardie), and TDI (Trophic Diatom Index). However, in SEQ, most of the environmental variables including DOC, ammonia nitrogen (NH4-N), TN, SRP, and electrical conductivity (EC) showed no significant relationships with diatom indices, and the DI-CH (Swiss Diatom Index) and WAT (Watanabe's Index) were unrelated to any of the variables examined. Only pH and nitrite or nitrate nitrogen (NOX-N) were significant predictors of several diatom indices in SEQ, especially TID (Rott trophic index). In the upper Han River, much of the spatial variation in most diatom indices was explained by proximate determinants alone, including EC, DOC, dissolved oxygen (DO) or SRP, or a combination of ultimate (canopy, forest) and proximate factors (R2 in most models> 0.75). Most diatom indices performed as predicted in the upper Han River where nutrient and organic matter pollution was relatively high, and variation in pH low. However, the indices performed poorly in SEQ where the water quality gradient was low and instead most responded to spatial variation in pH. This finding serves as a caution to the application of diatom indices in river basins that fall outside of the range of water quality values of the systems in which they originally developed.

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Consistency and sensitivity of stream periphyton community structural and functional responses to nutrient enrichment

Cited by 32 publications

References 58 publications

The influence of riparian vegetation and season on stream metabolism of Valley Creek, Minnesota

The influence of riparian vegetation and season on stream metabolism of Valley Creek, Minnesota

Bottom‐up influences on tropical freshwater food web structure support the “environmental filtering” hypothesis

Benthic Diatom Based Indices for Water Quality Assessment in Two Subtropical Streams

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