Abstract
Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the anthropogenic degradation of the riverbed and its relationship to the ecological status of the adjacent river landscape. The key objective of this research was to determine the extent of the disturbance of the selected small streams and their riparian zone in a study area located in a forest and forest-agricultural landscape in the Czech Republic. The next step was to analyze the mutual relationships between the ecological status of the riparian vegetation and the hydromorphological status of the riverbed. The main working hypothesis considered the good hydromorphological status of the river as reflected in the favorable environmental status of the surrounding riparian habitats and vice versa. It was found in more than 90% of the total length of studied watercourses that the character of linkages between channel morphology and the ecological status of riparian vegetation is directly influenced by anthropogenic activities. An interesting finding is that the degraded streams in lowland sites are often encompassed by natural or close-to-natural habitats. On the contrary, the natural status of the riverbed was found in a significantly forested headwater area, but the riparian habitats did not reach even a close-to-natural status. This paper contributes to clarifying the significance of human impact on the river morphology, reflected in the reduction of connectivity between the terrestrial and fluvial parts of the river landscape. It helps to explore the most important disturbances affecting mutual interactions between the river and the riparian habitats.
Highlights
Hydromorphological characteristics represent one of the indicators in the assessment of the overall ecological status of rivers [1]
We can conclude that the relationship between the morphological status of a river network and the ecological status of the appropriate floodplain area is significantly affected by external factors—mostly by human activity
Human activity is a common cause of loss of connectivity between the terrestrial and fluvial part of the river landscape, and this trend is evident in segments with
Summary
Hydromorphological characteristics represent one of the indicators in the assessment of the overall ecological status of rivers [1] These features reflect the character of natural processes and human influence occurring throughout the river basin. The order in which these parts were regulated varied in the past; significant changes in almost the entire length of the rivers started to occur around the beginning of the 20th century [2]. During this period, it was typical to modify the watercourse initially and to begin with intensive floodplain exploitation [3]. In the case of smaller watercourses, an area of their floodplain ecosystems
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