Votre recherche
Résultats 2 ressources
-
1. This review is presented as a broad synthesis of riverine landscape diversity, beginning with an account of the variety of landscape elements contained within river corridors. Landscape dynamics within river corridors are then examined in the context of landscape evolution, ecological succession and turnover rates of landscape elements. This is followed by an overview of the role of connectivity and ends with a riverine landscape perspective of biodiversity. 2. River corridors in the natural state are characterised by a diverse array of landscape elements, including surface waters (a gradient of lotic and lentic waterbodies), the fluvial stygoscape (alluvial aquifers), riparian systems (alluvial forests, marshes, meadows) and geomorphic features (bars and islands, ridges and swales, levees and terraces, fans and deltas, fringing floodplains, wood debris deposits and channel networks). 3. Fluvial action (erosion, transport, deposition) is the predominant agent of landscape evolution and also constitutes the natural disturbance regime primarily responsible for sustaining a high level of landscape diversity in river corridors. Although individual landscape features may exhibit high turnover, largely as a function of the interactions between fluvial dynamics and successional phenomena, their relative abundance in the river corridor tends to remain constant over ecological time. 4. Hydrological connectivity, the exchange of matter, energy and biota via the aqueous medium, plays a major though poorly understood role in sustaining riverine landscape diversity. Rigorous investigations of connectivity in diverse river systems should provide considerable insight into landscape‐level functional processes. 5. The species pool in riverine landscapes is derived from terrestrial and aquatic communities inhabiting diverse lotic, lentic, riparian and groundwater habitats arrayed across spatio‐temporal gradients. Natural disturbance regimes are responsible for both expanding the resource gradient in riverine landscapes as well as for constraining competitive exclusion. 6. Riverine landscapes provide an ideal setting for investigating how complex interactions between disturbance and productivity structure species diversity patterns.
-
Abstract Ice is present during a part of the year on many rivers of cold, and even temperate, regions of the globe. Though largely ignored in hydrological literature, river ice has serious hydrologic impacts, including extreme flood events caused by ice jams, interference with transportation and energy production, low winter flows and associated ecological and water quality consequences. It is also a major factor in the life cycle of many aquatic and other species, being both beneficial and destructive, depending on location and time of year. A brief review of the hydrologic aspects of river ice shows strong climatic links and illustrates the sensitivity of the entire ice regime to changes in climatic conditions. To date, this sensitivity has only partly been documented: the vast majority of related studies have focused on the timing of freeze‐up and break‐up over the past century, and indicate trends that are consistent with concomitant changes in air temperature. It is only in the past few years that attention has been paid to the more complex, and practically more important, question of what climatic change may do to the frequency and severity of extreme ice jams, floods and low flows. The probable changes to the ice regime of rivers, and associated hydrological processes and impacts, are discussed in the light of current understanding. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.