Fish response to the temporal hierarchy of the natural flow regime in the Daly River, northern Australia

Stewart‐Koster, Ben; Olden, Julian D.; Kennard, Mark J.; Pusey, Bradley James; Boone, Edward L.; Douglas, Michael M.; Jackson, Sue

doi:10.1111/j.1095-8649.2011.03072.x

Cited by 42 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 65 publications

(88 reference statements)

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“…Large wet-season flows are likely to result in high recruitment pulses as a result of both high levels of spawning in the large wet-season flows, and higher juvenile survival as a result of the subsequent higher dryseason flows. For example, the recruitment strength of Barramundi and Sooty Grunter in the dry season is highly correlated to the preceding wet-season discharge (StauntonSmith et al 2004, Halliday et al 2008, Stewart-Koster et al 2011. However, significant water extraction could reduce dry-season discharge so that it is no longer correlated with the magnitude of the preceding wet season.…”

Section: Wet-dry Transition: Lowmediummentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of water extraction on the low-flow hydrology and ecology of tropical savannah rivers: an appraisal for northern Australia

King

Townsend²,

Douglas

et al. 2015

Freshwater Science

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Balancing the freshwater needs of humans and ecosystems is a fundamental challenge for the management of rivers worldwide. River regulation and water extraction can affect all components of the natural flow regime, yet few studies have investigated the effects on the low-flow end of the hydrograph. Low-flow periods are hydrologically distinctive and ecologically important, varying in nature among climatic zones. Tropical savannah rivers are characterized by highly seasonal and predictable flow regimes, but with high interannual variation in the magnitude, timing, and duration of low flows. Many tropical savannah rivers are relatively intact, especially in northern Australia, but many are now receiving increasing attention for water-resource development through surface-and groundwater extraction. We identified the hydroecological effects of water extraction on 3 phases of the seasonal flow regime: the wet-dry transition, dry season, and dry-wet season transition for perennial and intermittent rivers in tropical savannah climates. We propose a conceptual model and 7 predictions that describe the ecological implications of dry-season water extraction in tropical savannah river systems worldwide. The predictions address: 1) connectivity, 2) availability of in-stream habitat, 3) dry-season persistence of in-channel refugia, 4) water quality during dry-wet and wet-dry transition periods, 5) decoupling of wet-and dry-season flows, and the cumulative effects on 6) groundwater-dependent species and 7) whole-ecosystem shifts. We used northern Australia as a case study to review the current level of evidence in support of these predictions and their potential ecological consequences, and used this review to propose key priorities for future research that are globally applicable.

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Section: Wet-dry Transition: Lowmediummentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of water extraction on the low-flow hydrology and ecology of tropical savannah rivers: an appraisal for northern Australia

King

Townsend²,

Douglas

et al. 2015

Freshwater Science

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“…This may range from relatively complex models such as ours to relatively simple hierarchical models that adequately reflect the conceptual understanding of a system (Latimer et al 2006, Webb and King 2009, Stewart-Koster et al 2011. The complexity of the statistical model will depend on the characteristics of the data and the conceptual understanding of the system.…”

Section: Species' Abundance and The Importance Of Patch Quality And Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating ecological principles into statistical models for the prediction of species’ distribution and abundance

et al. 2012

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Understanding the determinants of species' distributions and abundances is a central theme in ecology. The development of statistical models to achieve this has a long history and the notion that the model should closely reflect underlying scientific understanding has encouraged ecologists to adopt complex statistical methods as they arise. In this paper we describe a Bayesian hierarchical model that reflects a conceptual ecological model of multi-scaled environmental determinants of riverine fish species' distributions and abundances. We illustrate this with distribution and abundance data of a small-bodied fish species, the Empire gudgeon Hypseleotris galii, in the Mary and Albert Rivers, Queensland, Australia. Specifically, the model sought to address; 1) the extent that landscape-scale abiotic variables can explain the species' distribution compared to local-scale variables, 2) how local-scale abiotic variables can explain species' abundances, and 3) how are these local-scale relationships mediated by landscape-scale variables. Overall, the model accounted for around 60% of variation in the distribution and abundance of H. galii. The findings show that the landscape-scale variables explain much of the distribution of the species; however, there was considerable improvement in estimating the species' distribution with the addition of local-scale variables. There were many strong relationships between abundance and local-scale abiotic variables; however, several of these relationships were mediated by some of the landscape-scale variables. The extent of spatial autocorrelation in the data was relatively low compared to the distances among sampling reaches. Our findings exemplify that Bayesian statistical modelling provides a robust framework for statistical modelling that reflects our ecological understanding. This allows ecologists to address a range of ecological questions with a single unified probability model rather than a series of disconnected analyses.

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“…Jowett & Biggs (2008) suggested that decisions on ecological flows should be made by identifying the valued biological components (e.g., specific taxa) and the components of flow regimes that are redundant with respect to these (i.e., that are not important for supporting the taxa). Similarly, responses of fishes to various components of the flow regime are also likely to differ between species and age classes (Stewart-Koster et al 2011). Clearly identifying the specific biological values to be supported helps to establish 'designer flow regimes' and is a pragmatic approach (Jowett & Biggs 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting influence of flow regime on freshwater fishes displaying diadromous and nondiadromous life histories

Crow

Booker

Snelder

2012

Ecology of Freshwater Fish

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Flow variability structures freshwater fish community traits and life-history patterns such as migration patterns between fresh and saltwater (diadromy). Few studies, however, have explored relationships between diadromy and flow regime while accounting for other abiotic covariables. The present paper used canonical ordinations to remove the shared variation between groups of explanatory variables that explain variation in fish communities and examine two objectives with New Zealand fishes: (i) to compare the unique contributions of Hydrological Regime, Climate, Habitat and Spatial-Seasonal data sets to the variation of diadromous and nondiadromous fishes and (ii) to compare the relative contributions of a Hydrological Variability and Low-Flow data set to community structure of both life-history patterns. All explanatory variables explained a total of 20.15% and 29.58% of the variation in diadromous and nondiadromous fishes, respectively. Objective 1 analyses showed that the largest unique component of variation was explained by Hydrological Regime for nondiadromous fishes (12.17%), while Climate uniquely explained the most variation in diadromous fishes (4.3%), followed closely by Hydrological Regime (3.08%). Objective 2 analyses showed that Hydrological Variability uniquely explained five and 11 times more variation than the Low-Flow data set in diadromous and nondiadromous fishes, respectively. Findings illustrate the importance of hydrological regime to New Zealand freshwater fishes. Specifically, aspects of hydrological variability uniquely account for more variation than aspects of low flow. Differing relative influences of hydrology between life-history patterns suggest that diadromy may mediate the influence of flow regime. Results outline difficulties for environmental flow settings when biota display differing life histories.

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Fish response to the temporal hierarchy of the natural flow regime in the Daly River, northern Australia

Cited by 42 publications

References 65 publications

Implications of water extraction on the low-flow hydrology and ecology of tropical savannah rivers: an appraisal for northern Australia

Implications of water extraction on the low-flow hydrology and ecology of tropical savannah rivers: an appraisal for northern Australia

Incorporating ecological principles into statistical models for the prediction of species’ distribution and abundance

Contrasting influence of flow regime on freshwater fishes displaying diadromous and nondiadromous life histories

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