Response of riparian vegetation to short- and long-term hydrologic variation.

ABSTRACT: Increasing demand for river water now conflicts with an increasing desire to maintain riparian ecosystems. Efficiently managing river flows for riparian vegetation requires an understanding of the time scale of flow effects, but this information is limited by the absence of long-term studies of vegetation change in response to flow variation. To investigate the influence of short- and long-term flow variability and dam operation on riparian vegetation, we determined the occurrence of 107 plant species in 133 permanent plots of known inundating discharge along the Gunnison River in Colorado on five different occasions between 1990 and 2013. Individual species moved up and down the gradient of inundating discharge coincident with increases and decreases in mean annual flow, and the correlati

SUBMITTER: Friedman JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10078403 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature