Habitat restoration in the context of watershed prioritization: the ecological performance of urban streams restoration projects in Portland, OR
- Format
- Article
- Status
- publishedVersion
- Description
Para las personas interesadas en obtener el trabajo completo con fines educativos, por favor contactarse directamente con la autora: briostouma@gmail.com.
In Portland (Oregon, USA) restoration actions have been undertaken at the watershed scale (e.g.: revegetation, stormwater management) to improve water quality, and at reach scale when water quality and quantity are adequate, to increase habitat heterogeneity. Habitat enhancement in urban streams can be important for threatened species but challenging, because of altered catchment hydrology and urban encroachment on floodplains and channel banks. To valuate reach-scale restoration projects in the Tryon Creek watershed, we sampled benthic macroinvertebrates and conducted habitat quality surveys pre-project and over four years post-project. Species sensitive to pollution and diversity of trophic groups increased after restoration. Taxonomical diversity increased after restoration, but was still low compared to reference streams. We found no significant changes in trait proportions and functional diversity. Functional diversity, proportion of shredders and semivoltine invertebrates were significantly higher in reference streams than the restored stream reaches. We hypothesized that inputs of coarse particulate organic matter and land use at watershed scale may explain the differences in biodiversity between restored and reference stream reaches. Habitat variables did not change from pre- to post-project, so could not explain community changes. This may have been partly attributable to insensitivity of the visual estimate methods used, but likely also reflects the importance of watershed variables on aquatic biota ? suggesting watershed actions may be more effective for the ecological recovery of streams. For future projects, we recommend multihabitat benthic sampling supported by studies of channel geomorphology to better understand stream response to restoration actions.
- Publication Year
- 2013
- Language
- eng
- Topic
- BIO-MONITORING
RESTORATION SUCCESS
HABITAT ENHANCEMENT
MACROINVERTEBRATES
NORTHWEST STREAMS
TRYON CREEK
- Repository
- Repositorio SENESCYT
- Rights
- openAccess
- License
- restrictedAccess