In recent years, riparian condition has become an integral part of any comprehensive environmental monitoring program (Barbour et al 1999, Wissmar and Bechta 1998). The effect riparian zones have on aquatic systems is well documented (Correll 1999). Measuring riparian quantity and quality is a less developed area of study with a wide range of practices depending on study goals and resource avai...

~ Riparian lands are among the most productive ecosystems on earth. They occupy only a small proportion of the landscape but frequently support a greater variety and abundance of animal life than adjacent habitats. ~ Important habitat components include vegetation (often taller, denser, more diverse, and more complex in riparian lands), food, standing water, shelter from predators, sites for ne...

Riparian zones can strongly influence the exchange of nutrients between streams and their watersheds. Most riparian studies have been done in mesic watersheds, which differ significantly from arid-land watersheds hydrologically. The goals of our work were to determine the strength and direction of hydrologic linkages between stream and riparian zone, and to estimate the extent of uptake of stre...

1. Riparian zones function as important ecotones that reduce nitrate concentration in groundwater and inputs into streams. In the boreal forest of interior Alaska, permafrost confines subsurface flow through the riparian zone to shallow organic horizons, where plant uptake of nitrate and denitrification are typically high. 2. In this study, riparian zone nitrogen retention was examined in a hig...

Soil nitrogen (N) budgets are used in a global, distributed flow-path model with 0.5° × 0.5° resolution, representing denitrification and N2O emissions from soils, groundwater and riparian zones for the period 1900-2000 and scenarios for the period 2000-2050 based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Total agricultural and natural N inputs from N fertilizers, animal manure, biological N2 fix...

Our ability to identify and manage riparian sites for groundwater nitrate (NOAh) removal is limited by uncertainty surrounding the relative importance of plant uptake vs. microbially mediated removal processes. Microcosm studies often demonstrate negligible transformation rates in the subsoil of riparian forests, even in situations where groundwater well networks showed substantial groundwater ...

Riparian vegetation is vulnerable to human impact worldwide, and this is especially so in arid areas, yet there have been few quantitative studies and this is especially so in Spain. The state of the riparian vegetation along three major rivers and seasonal watercourses of southeastern Spain was evaluated during 1992–93, using the species composition and community structure in watercourses of d...

many landscapes (Naiman and Decamps 1997; Ewel et al. 2001; McClain et al. 2003). Because they occur at the land–water junction alongside natural waterways, they form unique ecosystems that act as “buffer zones” between uplands and streams (Hill 1996; Lowrance 1998). Research on riparian ecology has been diverse, and includes analysis of the habitat requirements of rare plant and animal species...

Wetlands, and in particular riparian wetlands, are at the interface between well drained land and the aquatic environment, where they control the exchange of water and related chemical fluxes from catchment areas to surface waters like lakes and streams. Integrating wetlands and riparian zones in regional hydrological modeling is challenging because of the complex interactions between soil wate...

The relative importance of agricultural land retirement on water quality and aquatic-community health was investigated in the Minnesota River Basin. Eighty-two sites, with drainage areas ranging from 4.3 to 2200 km, were examined for nutrient concentrations, measures of aquatic-community health (e.g., fish index of biotic integrity [IBI] scores), and environmental factors (e.g., drainage area a...