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Map of sites (nsite = 40) within York Region of the Greater Toronto Area overlaid on the maximum value composite image of NDVI values for 2016. Symbol sizes are proportional to decomposition rates estimated at the site level.
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Headwater streams accumulate, process, and export organic materials for use in downstream environments. Decomposition of organic material, an important ecosystem function, may be sensitive to land cover changes in urbanizing regions since headwater stream processes tend to be tightly coupled with riparian and catchment characteristics. Headwaters r...
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Citations
... Furthermore, the range of average tensile loss rates in our summer samples (1.12 to 4.27%/day) encapsulated all but the lowest of rates observed in 25 forested streams in northern Michigan, USA, sampled by Tiegs et al. (2013). In contrast, another southern Ontario study observed a median tensile loss in the spring season of nearly twice that observed in our study (2.43%/day and 1.22%/day, respectively), perhaps reflecting the urban nature of many of the streams used in the study (Kielstra et al. 2019). ...
Background: Agricultural development of former wetlands has resulted in many headwater streams being sourced by subsurface agricultural drainage systems. Subsurface drainage inputs can significantly influence stream environmental conditions, such as temperature, hydrology, and water chemistry, that drive ecological function. However, ecological assessments of subsurface drainage impacts are rare. We assessed the impact of an agricultural drainage system on cellulose decomposition and benthic respiration using a paired stream study in a headwater branch of Nissouri Creek, in Ontario, Canada. Adjacent first order segments sourced by a spring-fed marsh and a cropped field with subsurface drainage, as well as the adjoining trunk segment, were sampled over a year using the cotton strip assay to measure cellulose decomposition and benthic respiration.
Results: Assessments of cellulose decomposition revealed a one-third reduction in the drainage-sourced segment compared to marsh-sourced segment. Between segment differences in cellulose decomposition were associated with reduced summer temperatures in the drainage-sourced segment. Impacts of stream cooling from the drainage-sourced segment were transmitted downstream as cellulose decomposition was slower than expected throughout the drainage-sourced segment and for several hundred meters down the adjoining trunk segment. Benthic respiration only differed between the drainage- and marsh-sourced segments in spring, when stream temperatures were similar.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest there may be a widespread reduction in cellulose decomposition in streams across similar agricultural regions where subsurface drainage is prevalent. However, cooling of streams receiving significant amounts of water inputs from subsurface drainage systems may impart increased resiliency to future climate warming.
... Promising options for low-cost monitoring programs may lie in remote sensing (Matejicev et al. 2003;Heasley et al. 2020), citizen science (Cartwright et al. 2015;Shupe 2017;Kielstra et al. 2019), inter-departmental collaboration within municipal governments, or collaboration with higher educational institutions. Using technology and stakeholder/citizen programs to gather information can lower costs and improve efficiency of data collection programs. ...
Federal regulations for municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s) in the United States have been in place since 1990 as part of the Nation Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), aiming to reduce sediment and pollutant loads originating from urban areas. However, small-municipality (Phase II) MS4s frequently grapple with several challenges, resulting in a lack of stakeholder buy-in and actionable stormwater management plans. We identify five common challenges concerning MS4 requirements based on literature review, professional experience, and feedback solicited from stakeholders, municipal managers, and fellow professionals and offer real-world examples of efficient, effective MS4 frameworks and/or solutions. The five challenges are summarized as beliefs that: (1) agricultural land use is the largest pollutant contributor and the root cause of pollution problems; (2) stormwater management only benefits downstream communities; (3) large, expensive projects are required to comply with regulations; (4) maintenance, monitoring, and inspection of best management practices (BMPs) is overwhelmingly complex and expensive; and (5) a lack of direct funding makes complying with regulations an impossible task. These challenges are universal in nature for Phase II MS4 permittees and can create real barriers for effective stormwater management. However, we found many examples of methods or techniques to effectively address these five specific challenges, making them well-suited and important for discussion. BMPs can create tangible improvements for surrounding communities (e.g., reduced streambank erosion and flooding), and improved understanding of the structure and options within the MS4 program will help small municipalities make informed choices about management plans.
... This represents a problem for water quality and ecological integrity on a catchment scale because a) if a large number of small streams is impacted within a short time, there is a large area of impaired habitat in the same catchment, and b) many small streams that intersect stands close to each other combine in the same network (Fig. 4) which may cause downstream cumulative effects. The severity of cumulative effects has been considered in urban and agricultural catchments (Jones et al., 2017;Kielstra et al., 2019;Mineau et al., 2015;Seitz et al., 2011), but has not been adequately and empirically addressed in production forests (Kuglerová et al., 2017;Richardson, 2019). This is problematic also because forested headwaters receive few mitigation measures (i.e., buffers, Kuglerová et al., 2020) to prevent impairments and thus the potential for cumulative effects is large. ...
In this paper we describe how forest management practices in Fennoscandian countries, namely Sweden and Finland, expose streams to multiple stressors over space and time. In this region, forestry includes several different management actions and we explore how these may successively disturb the same location over 60–100 year long rotation periods. Of these actions, final harvest and associated road construction, soil scarification, and/or ditch network maintenance are the most obvious sources of stressors to aquatic ecosystems. Yet, more subtle actions such as planting, thinning of competing saplings and trees, and removing logging residues also represent disturbances around waterways in these landscapes. We review literature about how these different forestry practices may introduce a combination of physicochemical stressors, including hydrological change, increased sediment transport, altered thermal and light regimes, and water quality deterioration. We further elaborate on how the single stressors may combine and interact and we consequently hypothesise how these interactions may affect aquatic communities and processes. Because production forestry is practiced on a large area in both countries, the various stressors appear multiple times during the rotation cycles and potentially affect the majority of the stream network length within most catchments. We concluded that forestry practices have traditionally not been the focus of multiple stressor studies and should be investigated further in both observational and experimental fashion. Stressors accumulate across time and space in forestry dominated landscapes, and may interact in unpredictable ways, limiting our current understanding of what forested stream networks are exposed to and how we can design and apply best management practices.
Anthropogenic activity degrades stream water quality, especially in urban areas. Quantified connections between pollution sources, degree of water quality degradation, and the disproportionate impact of degradation on underserved communities are not yet fully explored. Here, the anthropogenic effects on water quality and the heterogeneous distribution of degraded streams were examined in the urban watershed of the Rouge River in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan. We used benthic macroinvertebrate data collected by volunteer scientists and aggregated into a Stream Quality Index (SQI) to define long-term water quality patterns. Spatial dependence of the data was assessed with spatial stream network models incorporating socio-economic and environmental predictors. The best model included poverty as an explanatory variable with a negative relationship with stream quality. SQI predictions under true watershed conditions revealed a 1% decrease in SQI with 1% increase in poverty. This work demonstrated the benefits of volunteer science and spatial modeling methods for urban stream modeling. Our finding of inequitably distributed water quality impairment in urban streams underscores the importance of focused restoration in economically oppressed urban areas.
