The Ecology and Management of Wood in World Rivers

Abstract

<em>Abstract.</em>—Wood is recruited to rivers by a diversity of processes, including chronic mortality, windstorms, wildfires, bank erosion, landslides, and ice storms. Recruitment, storage, and transport of large wood in streams can be understood in terms of a mass balance, or quantitative wood budget, similar to the study of other material fluxes in watersheds. A wood budgeting framework is presented that includes numerical expressions for punctuated forest mortality by fire, chronic mortality and tree fall, bank erosion, mass wasting, decay, and stream transport. When used with appropriate parameter values derived for specific conditions or regions, the wood budget equations can be used to make predictions on the importance of various landscape processes on wood abundance in streams in any locale. For example, wood budgets can be used to predict how variations in climate (wet – dry), topography (steep – gentle), basin size (small – large), and land management could affect abundance and distribution of large wood in streams. Wood budgets also can be integrated into numerical simulation models for estimating the natural range of variability, specifically temporal fluctuations of wood supply driven by large storms, floods, fires, and mass wasting, and spatial variability driven by topographic heterogeneity and variations in wood transport. Field studies of wood in streams may be enhanced by the use of a wood budget framework. This includes specifying what measurements are required over what length of stream for estimating recruitment rates of all relevant inputs processes, wood loss by decay, and stream transport of wood. Finally, wood budgets can be used to estimate rates of bank erosion, forest mortality, and landsliding, given appropriate field measurements of wood in streams and riparian conditions.