Negative effects of stagnation and drought on benthic invertebrate communities in lowland streams

Abstract

Streams are extremely vulnerable to water abstraction across the world because of increasing water demand from humans, as well as because precipitation is decreasing in many areas. To determine how water abstraction affects water chemistry, hydromorphological variables and invertebrate assemblages, we conducted an experiment in which we mimicked two levels of disturbance: stagnation and drought. The experiment was performed at two lowland streams in Galicia (north-west Spain), which were similar in physical conditions but differed in trophic status (high v. low P). Samples were taken both before and after manipulation at the upstream control and downstream-disturbed stretches. There was a significant overall effect of water abstraction on both disturbed stretches, but invertebrate assemblages responded differently between streams and within stretches. In the low-P stream, invertebrate densities remained unchanged in the drought stretch but declined in the stagnation stretch relative to the control. At the same time, the high-P stream exhibited a strong loss of diversity in both the stagnation and drought stretches. These results suggest that short-term flow reductions driven by increasing water scarcity and abstraction put benthic communities in lowland streams at risk, and that risk would be greater (in terms of biodiversity loss) in streams that are initially impaired by high-P loading.