Abstract
Land use changes remain one of the leading global change drivers leading to biodiversity loss in terrestrial and aquatic systems. Restoration aims to counteract the development of “natural” (i.e., forested, grassland, or wetland) spaces that alter and fragment the landscape and reduce local biodiversity through direct impacts to the water column and indirect impacts which inhibit adult dispersal of aquatic insects. This case study seeks to determine if a large-scale restoration of a former cranberry bog in Plymouth, MA has resulted in near-term measurable changes to the composition, structure, and function of local-scale in-stream habitat diversity. A three-year observational field study beginning one year prior to reconstruction was conducted at the restored cranberry bog and at two control treatment sites: an active cranberry bog reference and a least impacted reference (i.e., has never been used for modern agriculture). Seasonal inventories of in-stream habitat features including depth, substrate, macrohabitat, and in-stream cover were taken from 2015 to 2017. We found that 2 years post-restoration, there was no significant evidence of compositional or functional change, while there was a significant increase in structural diversity. There is reason to suspect the system is still in flux and longer-term monitoring may detect future habitat heterogeneity alterations.
Highlights
Human modification of stream systems and their surrounding landscapes has led to significant aquatic biodiversity declines and increased risk of future declines [1]
Principal component analysis of local-scale habitat variables demonstrated habitat separation of least impacted reference (LIR) from cranberry bog (CBR) and active flow-through through cranberry bog (ACB), while ACB clusters were within the variation observed at CBR (Figure 2)
ACB habitat clusters were within the variation shown for CBR habitat, with the exception of significant differences along PC2 in the spring (Supplemental Figure S1)
Summary
Human modification of stream systems and their surrounding landscapes has led to significant aquatic biodiversity declines and increased risk of future declines [1]. Land use change and habitat loss are recognized as leading global drivers of biodiversity change, and the most significant ones for the future of streams and rivers [2]. Land use changes have been implicated in degradation of stream biological conditions at both the local and catchment scale [3,4]. Due to the expense of these projects, effort often is undertaken at the local, or “reach”, scale, and as a result the ecological outcome is often unclear, due to limited investment in monitoring and the confounding factors of larger watershed impact [9,10]
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