Landscape diversity and forest edge density regulate stream water quality in agricultural catchments

Clément, Francis; Ruiz, Julie; Rodríguez, Marco A.; Blais, Daniel; Campeau, Stéphane

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.09.001

Cited by 112 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In addition, spatial information on land use practices could be further integrated into the analysis to enrich the interpretation. LULC effects can also be studied in more detail by taking into account spatial heterogeneity through landscape metrics studies, as some authors did [18,47,48], or, e.g., focusing on specific locations or types of forest such as riparian forests. Study of residuals and outliers could bring to light how catchment management can mitigate effects on water quality, as there are sub-catchments where water quality is unexpectedly high or low based on its LULC profile.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking Forest Cover to Water Quality: A Multivariate Analysis of Large Monitoring Datasets

Brogna

Michez

Jacobs

et al. 2017

Water

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Forested catchments are generally assumed to provide higher quality water. However, this hypothesis must be validated in various contexts as interactions between multiple land use and land cover (LULC) types, ecological variables and water quality variables render this relationship highly complex. This paper applies a straightforward multivariate approach on a typical large monitoring dataset of a highly managed and densely populated area (Wallonia, Belgium; 10-year dataset), quantifying forest cover effects on nine physico-chemical water quality variables. Results show that forest cover explains about one third of the variability of water quality and is positively correlated with higher quality water. When controlling for spatial autocorrelation, forest cover still explains 9% of water quality. Unlike needle-leaved forest cover, broad-leaved forest cover presents an independent effect from ecological variables and explains independently 4.8% of water quality variability while it shares 5.8% with cropland cover. This study demonstrates clear independent effects of forest cover on water quality, and presents a method to tease out independent LULC effects from typical large multivariate monitoring datasets. Further research on explanatory variables, spatial distribution effects and water quality datasets could lead to effective strategies to mitigate pollution and reach legal targets.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking Forest Cover to Water Quality: A Multivariate Analysis of Large Monitoring Datasets

Brogna

Michez

Jacobs

et al. 2017

Water

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Section: Advanced Review Wireswileycom/watermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since landscape configuration reportedly has a significant impact on water quality, high landscape diversity improves water quality. 32,[47][48][49] This in turn might also reflect on diatom assemblages (planktonic or benthic) sampled in the Attert River basin.Diatom literature 50,51 stresses the importance of ion concentration and trophic status as major environmental drivers of diatom distributions in lakes and streams, 52 while physical factors typically have a lesser effect on community structure. Moreover, studies where spatial configuration accounted for a significant proportion of the community variance clearly outnumbered the studies suggesting strict local environmental control.…”

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confidence: 99%

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

et al. 2017

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Diatoms are remarkable organisms. They are present in almost all habitats containing water (e.g., lakes, streams, soils, bark) and rank among the most common algal groups in both freshwaters and marine ecosystems. The ubiquitous character of aquatic diatoms has triggered countless applications as environmental tracers for studies in water quality, paleoclimate reconstruction and sediment tracing. However, diatoms also occur in the terrestrial environment. It is this plethora of diatom life-forms that has recently triggered interest in their use as tracers of hydrological processes. The use of diatoms in catchment hydrology has been very limited. Part of the reason is that until recently, the taxonomy and ecology of terrestrial diatom assemblages were largely unknown. However, in the past decade, much work has been done to quantify terrestrial diatom reservoir size, dynamics, and potential depletion following precipitation events. Therefore, such terrestrial diatoms now hold promise for use in catchment hydrology-for tracing runoff flow sources and pathways across a wide range of spatial scales. Here we review the literature on terrestrial diatoms and describe the various sampling protocols that have been designed and tested for specific applications in hydrological processes research. We review and summarize the work on terrestrial diatom reservoir characterization, transport mechanisms and pathways to show how such diatom-based tracer work might be possible at the catchment scale for rainfall-runoff studies. Finally, we present a vision for future work that might take advantage of terrestrial diatoms in catchment hydrology and discuss the main challenges going forward. © 2017 The Authors. WIREs Water published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. How to cite this article:WIREs Water 2017Water , 4:e1241. doi: 10.1002Water /wat2.1241 INTRODUCTION D iatoms (Bacillariophyta) are present in almost all habitats containing water (e.g., lakes, streams, soils, litter, bark). They count among the most common algal groups in both freshwaters and marine ecosystems. 1 Despite their microscopic size (10-200 microns), 2 diatoms generate an impressive amount of carbon through photosynthesis: almost as much as all rainforests combined. 3 Identification of diatoms date back to the early 1700s as noted by Round et al. 1 Decades later, Otto Friedrich Müller published the first description of a diatom in 1783 (Vibrio paxillifer ≡ Bacillaria paradoxa). Since then, This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. more than 64,000 diatom species have been described-and new species are added to that list almost daily with the number of extant species extrapolated to ca 100,000. 4,5 The identification of diatoms (from the Greek 'diatomos' or 'cut in half') commonly relies on the highly differentiated cell wall (or frustule) that is mostly co...

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“…Native forest loss directly affects the characteristics of terrestrial and aquatic habitats by changing microclimate conditions and decreasing water quality and vegetation diversity (Ewers and Banks‐Leite , Clément et al. , Matos et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The conversion of native forest to human-modified landscapes reduces and fragments natural habitats and is a major driver of biodiversity loss at multiple scales (Collins andCrump 2009, Newbold et al 2015). Native forest loss directly affects the characteristics of terrestrial and aquatic habitats by changing microclimate conditions and decreasing water quality and vegetation diversity (Ewers and Banks-Leite 2013, Cl ement et al 2017, Matos et al 2017. For example, forest areas act as buffers for the aboveground microclimate (Ewers and Banks-Leite 2013), providing more stable habitats for terrestrial fauna.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of agriculture and topography on tropical amphibian species and communities

Ribeiro

Siqueira

Brejão

et al. 2018

Ecological Applications

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Habitat loss is the greatest threat to the persistence of forest-dependent amphibians, but it is not the only factor influencing species occurrences. The composition of the surrounding matrix, structure of stream networks, and topography are also important landscape characteristics influencing amphibian distributions. Tropical forests have high diversity and endemism of amphibians, but little is known about the specific responses of many of these species to landscape features. In this paper, we quantify the response of amphibian species and communities to landscape-scale characteristics in streams within the fragmented Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We surveyed amphibian communities during a rainy season in 50 independent stream segments using Standardized Acoustic and Visual Transect Sampling (active) and Automated Acoustic Recorders (passive) methods. We developed a hierarchical multi-species occupancy model to quantify the influence of landscape-scale characteristics (forest cover, agriculture, catchment area, stream density, and slope) on amphibian occurrence probabilities while accounting for imperfect detection of species using the two survey methods. At the community level, we estimated an overall mean positive relationship between amphibian occurrence probabilities and forest cover, and a negative relationship with agriculture. Catchment area and slope were negatively related with amphibian community structure (95% credible interval [CI] did not overlap zero). The species-level relationships with landscape covariates were highly variable but showed similar patterns to those at the community level. Species detection probabilities varied widely and were influenced by the sampling method. For most species, the active method resulted in higher detection probabilities than the passive approach. Our findings suggest that small streams and flat topography lead to higher amphibian occurrence probabilities for many species in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Our results combined with land use and topographic maps can be used to make predictions of amphibian occurrences and distributions beyond our study area. Such projections can be useful to determine where to conduct future research and prioritize conservation efforts in human-modified landscapes.

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Landscape diversity and forest edge density regulate stream water quality in agricultural catchments

Cited by 112 publications

References 32 publications

Linking Forest Cover to Water Quality: A Multivariate Analysis of Large Monitoring Datasets

Linking Forest Cover to Water Quality: A Multivariate Analysis of Large Monitoring Datasets

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

Effects of agriculture and topography on tropical amphibian species and communities

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