Impacts of Lakeshore Residential Development on Coarse Woody Debris in North Temperate Lakes

Abstract

Coarse woody debris (CWD) is a critical input from forested watersheds into aquatic ecosystems. Human activities often reduce the abundance of CWD in fluvial systems, but little is known about human impacts on CWD in lakes. We surveyed 16 north temperate lakes to assess relationships among CWD, riparian vegetation, and shoreline residential development. We found strong positive correlation between CWD density and riparian tree density (r2 = 0.78), and strong negative correlation between CWD density and shoreline cabin density (r2 = 0.71) at the whole‐lake scale. At finer spatial scales (e.g., between sampling plots), correlations between CWD and riparian vegetation were weaker. The strength of relationships between CWD and riparian vegetation was also negatively influenced by the extent of cabin development. Overall, there was significantly more CWD in undeveloped lakes (mean of 555 logs/km of shoreline) than in developed lakes. Within developed lakes, CWD density differed between forested sites (mean of 379 logs/km of shoreline) and cabin‐occupied sites (mean of 57 logs/km of shoreline). These losses of CWD will affect littoral communities in developed north temperate lakes for about two centuries. Because CWD is important littoral habitat for many aquatic organisms, zoning and lake management should aim to minimize further reductions of aquatic CWD and woody vegetation from lakeshore residences.

Sustaining Aquatic Ecosystems in Boreal Regions

“…Recently, scientists at ELA have shown that removal of macrophyte beds causes reductions in young-of-the-year pike, yellow perch, and pumpkinseed. Christensen et al (1996) found a linear relationship between logs in littoral areas of northern Wisconsin lakes and fish abundance.In many cases, water levels are controlled by dams or weirs at lake outlets, preventing natural fluctuations.…”

European Wilderness in a Time of Farmland Abandonment

“…The most obvious impact is road mortality, shown to affect mammals (Philcox et al 1999;Seiler 2005;Grilo et al 2009), birds (Orlowski 2005), reptiles (Iosif et al 2013) and amphibians (Patrick et al 2012). But impacts of roads, traffic and human access can be much more profound, affecting population and community structure (Habib et al 2007), trophic interactions (Kristan III and Boarman 2003;Whittington et al 2011), ecosystem functioning and structure (Christensen et al 1996;Hansen et al 2005;Rentch et al 2005), and environmental conditions through high pollution levels (Hatt et al 2004). Roads can favour the expansion of invasive species (Jodoin et al 2008;Vicente et al 2010), and of exotic and human-favoured predators (Alterio et al 1998).…”

Ecology of freshwater shore zones

“…Humans remove wood from river channels to improve recreational and commercial navigation (Angradi et al 2004), to tidy the appearance of shoreline properties (Christensen et al 1996;Francis and Schindler 2006), or to reduce the likelihood of damage to infrastructure. Humans have cut many riparian forests, removing the source of wood to the shore zone (Christensen et al 1996;Angradi et al 2004;Francis and Schindler 2006;Scholten et al 2005). Reservoirs act as traps for wood (Piégay 2003), and stabilized river flows tend to reduce bank-cutting, which is an important source of wood to rivers, as well as reducing the ability of the river to transport wood (Angradi et al 2004).…”