Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams: Perspectives for critical zone science and research on socio‐ecosystems

Fovet, Ophélie; Belemtougri, Axel; Boithias, Laurie; Braud, Isabelle; Charlier, Jean‐Baptiste; Cottet, Marylise; Daudin, Kevin; Dramais, Guillaume; Ducharne, Agnès; Folton, Nathalie; Grippa, Manuela; Hector, Basile; Kuppel, Sylvain; Coz, Jérôme Le; Legal, Luc; Martin, Philippe; Moatar, Florentina; Molénat, Jérôme; Probst, Anne; Riotte, Jean; Vidal, Jean‐Philippe; Vinatier, Fabrice; Datry, Thibault

doi:10.1002/wat2.1523

Cited by 43 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 237 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…While the use of artificial channels allows some control of the physical and chemical conditions, mesocosm experiments maintain general limitations regarding the transferability of results to natural systems (see Romero et al, 2019). The overall complexity of aquatic systems (e.g., the interactions between biogeochemical cycles and biota, hydrodynamics, multiple anthropogenic and natural stressors) cannot be fully reproduced in the channels (Fovet et al, 2021; Shumilova et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutrient stream attenuation is altered by the duration and frequency of flow intermittency

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

River flow intermittency affects physical and biological processes in lotic ecosystems, including nutrient attenuation and therefore water purification. We investigated the effect of river flow intermittency, including its duration and occurrence frequency, on the attenuation of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and soluble reactive phosphorus (P-PO 4 3À ). The net balances of each nutrient form were assessed in artificial streams colonized by biofilms and exposed to six treatments resulting from the combination of two flow intermittency durations (28 or 56 days) and three intermittency frequencies (one, two or four interruption episodes). The respective influences on the nutrient balances were assessed one and eight days after flow resumption, with negative or positive balances indicating net consumption or production, respectively. The P-PO 4 3À balances ranged from À50.3 to À15.7 μg P-PO 4 3À h À1 m À2 , while for the components of DIN, they varied between À135.6 and À7.3 μg N-NH 4 + h À1 m À2 (ammonium), À1.4 and 4.2 μg N-NO 2 À h À1 m À2 (nitrite) and À39.1 and 18.6 μg N-NO 3 À h À1 m À2 (nitrate). In general, longer non-flow durations impaired nutrient attenuation. Overall, while each nutrient form showed specific patterns, our experiment indicated that (1) nutrient attenuation usually decreased with longer non-flow durations, (2) attenuation generally recovered after frequent events of water flow resumption and when rewetting was longer and (3) longer desiccation periods seemed to persistently affect the biogeochemical responses regardless the number of times flow returned to the system. Our results highlight that more severe conditions (causing dehydration of the substrates and inhibition of biofilm activity) might strongly affect the biogeochemical functioning of temporary streams, with important management implications under accelerating global changes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutrient stream attenuation is altered by the duration and frequency of flow intermittency

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This reduction in runoff is equivalent to the annual renewable freshwater resource for 10k people, considering that the annual renewable freshwater resources averaged over the total European population for the period 1990-2017 reached 4560 m 3 per person (https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/ indicators/use-of-freshwater-resources-3/assessment-4, last access: 25 October 2021). On the other hand, even if 30 %-40 % of runoff reduction can result in a small absolute reduction for drier basins, this reduction can lead to important changes in hydrological connectivity and shifts in streamflow regimes from perennial to intermittent (Fovet et al, 2021) with serious implications for water quality (Armstrong et al, 2012;Addy et al, 2019), river ecosystems and fish survival (Lennox et al, 2019), freshwater biodiversity (Datry et al, 2016) and the quality and diversity of ecosystem services they provide, especially over southern Europe (Vicente-Serrano et al, 2014;García-Ruiz et al, 2011).…”

Section: Multi-year Droughts In Europe and Water Budget Deficit Exace...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaporation enhancement drives the European water-budget deficit during multi-year droughts

Massari

Avanzi

Bruno

et al. 2022

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. In a warming climate, periods with lower than average precipitation will increase in frequency and intensity. During such periods, known as meteorological droughts, the decline in annual runoff may be proportionally larger than the corresponding decline in precipitation. Reasons behind this exacerbation of runoff deficit during dry periods remain largely unknown, and this challenges the predictability of when this exacerbation will occur in the future and how intense it will be. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that runoff deficit exacerbation during droughts is a common feature across climates, driven by evaporation enhancement. We relied on multidecadal records of streamflow and precipitation for more than 200 catchment areas across various European climates, which distinctively show the emergence of similar periods of exacerbated runoff deficit identified in previous studies, i.e. runoff deficit on the order of −20 % to −40 % less than what expected from precipitation deficits. The magnitude of this exacerbation is two to three times larger for basins located in dry regions than for basins in wet regions, and is qualitatively correlated with an increase in annual evaporation during droughts, in the order of +11 % and +33 % over basins characterized by energy-limited and water-limited evaporation regimes, respectively. Thus, enhanced atmospheric and vegetation demand for moisture during dry periods induces a nonlinear precipitation-runoff relationship for low-flow regimes, which results in an unexpectedly large decrease in runoff during periods of already low water availability. Forecasting onset, magnitude, and duration of these drops in runoff have paramount societal and ecological implications, especially in a warming climate, given their supporting role for safeguarding water, food, and energy. The outcome that water basins are prone to this exacerbation of runoff deficit for various climates and evaporation regimes makes further understanding of its patterns of predictability an urgent priority for water-resource planning and management in a warming and drier climate.

show abstract

“…While these approaches allow mapping and modelling of the active streamlength and drainage density, they are not primarily concerned with processes along rivers and ecological implications of IRES. For research about interdisciplinary impacts, the concept of aquatic states has therefore evolved and is widely used for classification of IRES (Fovet et al, 2021; Leigh & Datry, 2017; Meerveld et al, 2020; Messager et al, 2021; Pastor et al, 2022). The concept defines three hydrological phases (flowing, standing, dry) corresponding to the different habitats (lotic, lentic, terrestial) generated in response to different flow conditions (Costigan et al, 2016; Datry et al, 2017; Gallart et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring zero water level in stream reaches: A comparison of an image‐based versus a conventional method

Herzog

Stahl

Blauhut

et al. 2022

Hydrological Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A limited number of gauging stations, especially for nested catchments, hampers a process understanding of the interaction between streamflow, groundwater and water usage during drought. Non-commercial measurement devices can help overcome this lack of monitoring, but they need to be thoroughly tested. The Dreisam River in the South-West of Germany was affected by several hydrological drought events from 2015 to 2020 during which parts of the main stream and tributaries fell dry. Therefore it provided a useful case study area for a flexible longitudinal water quality and quantity monitoring network. Among other measurements the setup employs an image-based method with QR codes as fiducial marker. In order to assess under which conditions the QR-code based water level loggers (WLL) deliver data according to scientific standards, we compared its performance to conventional capacitive based WLL. The results from 20 monitoring stations reveal that the riverbed was dry for >50% at several locations and even for >70% at most severely affected locations during July and August 2020, with the north western parts of the catchment being especially concerned. Highly variable longitudinal drying patterns of the stream reaches emerged from the monitoring. The image-based method was found valuable for identification and validation of zero level occurrences. Nevertheless, a simple image processing approach (based on an automatic thresholding algorithm) did not compensate for errors due to natural conditions and technical setup.Our findings highlight that the complexity of measurement environments is a major challenge when working with image-based methods.

show abstract

Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams: Perspectives for critical zone science and research on socio‐ecosystems

Cited by 43 publications

References 237 publications

Nutrient stream attenuation is altered by the duration and frequency of flow intermittency

Nutrient stream attenuation is altered by the duration and frequency of flow intermittency

Evaporation enhancement drives the European water-budget deficit during multi-year droughts

Measuring zero water level in stream reaches: A comparison of an image‐based versus a conventional method

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About