Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic model. Our model predicts that aquatic-insect abundance will depend on a basic life-history trait—adult egg-laying behavior—such that open-water layers will be unaffected by hydropeaking, whereas ecologically important and widespread river-edge layers, such as mayflies, will be extirpated. These predictions are supported by a more-than-2500-sample, citizen-science data set of aquatic insects from the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and by a survey of insect diversity and hydropeaking intensity across dammed rivers of the Western United States. Our study reveals a hydropeaking-related life history bottleneck that precludes viable populations of many aquatic insects from inhabiting regulated rivers.
Original Source [2]
Links:
[1] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/feature-article/flow-management-hydropower-extirpates-aquatic-insects-undermining-river-food-webs
[2] http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/04/30/biosci.biw059
[3] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/theodore-kennedy
[4] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/jeffrey-d-muehlbauer
[5] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/charles-b-yackulic-et-al
[6] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/journal/bioscience
[7] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/dams
[8] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/rivers
[9] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/riverine-ecology
[10] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/hydrology
[11] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/insects
[12] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/colorado
[13] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/united-states-america-us
[14] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/hydroelectricity