In the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR), sedimentation of the riparian zone has occurred over the past 10 years. However, the sediment and related environmental effects have not been explored well. In the present study, sediment and soil in situ were collected in three sites of the riparian zone in the TGR. Samples were analyzed for water content, bulk density, pH, organic matter, total nitrogen, t...

Riparian wetlands have been shown to be effective "sinks" for nitrate N (NO3-), minimizing the downstream export of N to streams and coastal water bodies. However, the vast majority of riparian denitrification research has been in agricultural and forested watersheds, with relatively little work on riparian wetland function in urban watersheds. We investigated the variation and magnitude of den...

Estimation of riparian forest structural attributes, such as the Leaf Area Index (LAI), is an important step in identifying the amount of water use in riparian forest areas. In this study, small-footprint lidar data were used to estimate biophysical properties of young, mature, and old cottonwood trees in the Upper San Pedro River Basin, Arizona, USA. Canopy height and maximum and mean laser he...

Seasonal water limitation exerts a strong ecological filter on stream communities in semiarid regions. For firstyear riparian willow and poplar tree seedlings, desiccation from rapidly declining river flows can limit reproduction, especially on rivers in which flow regulation and land conversion have limited the amount of area available for recruitment. We investigated survivorship of first-yea...

Groundwater evapotranspiration (ETg) links various ecohydrological processes and is an important component in regional water budgets. In this study, an extensive monitoring network was established in a semiarid riparian area to investigate various controls on the spatiotemporal pattern of water table fluctuations (WTFs) and ETg induced by riparian vegetation. Along a vegetation gradient ( 1200 ...

Many species of wildlife depend on riparian habitats for various life-history functions (e.g., breeding, foraging, overwintering). Although this unique habitat is critical for many species, delineations of riparian zones and buffers for various taxa are lacking. Typically when buffer zones are determined to mitigate edge effects, they are based on criteria that protect aquatic resources alone a...

We investigated the influence of riparian and whole watershed land use as a function of stream size on surface water chemistry and assessed regional variation in these relationships. Sixty-eight watersheds in four level III U.S. EPA ecoregions in eastern Kansas were selected as study sites. Riparian land cover and watershed land use were quantified for the entire watershed, and by Strahler orde...

--This paper discusses the recreational and wildlife values of riparian habitats along the Rio Grande in western Texas (from El Paso to Del Rio). Several human activities have the potential or have in fact impacted on riparian resources in this region. These include: (1) irrigation diversions and stream channelization which greatly alter rates and amounts of water flow; (2) land flooding result...

The goal of beneficial management practices (BMPs) such as streambank fencing is to prevent or reduce water pollution of surface water bodies. We conducted a four year (2004–2007) study on a fenced 800-m reach of the Lower Little Bow (LLB) River in southern Alberta, Canada. Our hypothesis was that riparian health would be improved by streambank fencing, and that cattle exclusion would prevent w...

Many aquatic and riparian plant species are characterized by the ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually. Yet, little is known about how spatial variation in sexual and asexual reproduction affects the genotypic diversity within populations of aquatic and riparian plants. We used six polymorphic microsatellites to examine the genetic diversity within and differentiation among 17 popula...