Cladocera communities were studied in lotic and lentic environments of the Upper Paraná River floodplain, State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. A total of 63 species of Cladocera were identified in 108 samples. Of these, 24 species are considered new records for that floodplain, and one is a new record for Brazil. Chydoridae was the most representative family with 19 genera and 39 species.

The aim of this study is to identify the sources of uncertainty that induce the largest uncertainties in the model outcomes and quantify this uncertainty using expert elicitation. Analysis of expert opinions showed that the Qh-relation and the roughness predictor of the main channel cause the largest uncertainties for design water level computations. For effect studies, the floodplain topograph...

Floodplain forests serve a critical function in the global carbon cycle because floodplains constitute an important carbon sink compared with other terrestrial ecosystems. Forests on dynamic floodplain landscapes, such as those created by river meandering processes, are characterized by uneven-aged trees and exhibit high spatial variability, reflecting the influence of interacting fluvial, hydr...

Hydrological pulses are the main factor regulating the structure of biological communities in floodplains. Reservoirs above this ecosystem change the environment's dynamics and the community's biodiversity. This study evaluated the structure and stability of the rotifer community in response to changes in hydrological pulses after the Porto Primavera impoundment in the Upper Paraná River floodp...

Although manioc is well adapted to nutrient-poor Oxisols of Amazonia, ethnobotanical observations show that bitter manioc is also frequently cultivated in the highly fertile soils of the floodplains and Amazonian dark earths (ADE) along the middle Madeira River. Because different sets of varieties are grown in each soil type, and there are agronomic similarities between ADE and floodplain varie...

The hydrogeological system of an ecologically sensitive alpine floodplain in the Valle di Blenio, Switzerland, was investigated using hydrochemical and 3H-3He dating methods. Water samples from six wells and from different surface locations were analyzed. The analysis of the concentrations of major ions in conjunction with age determination by the 3H-3He-method allowed the main hydrological pro...

The integrity of aquatic ecosystems is being challenged worldwide by invading species, which has been one of the frequent causes of biodiversity loss. The invader may cause extinctions of vulnerable native species through predation, grazing, competition and habitat alteration. Daphnia lumholtzi G. O. Sars, 1885, a native cladoceran from Australia, Southwestern Asia and North Africa, has recentl...

Extending previous trophic transfer studies of the mercury-contaminated South River watershed, predictive models were built for mercury biomagnification in floodplain food webs at two more locations (North Park and Grand Cavern). Four of five models built to date based on methylmercury and δ(15)N met the a priori requirement for useful prediction (prediction r(2)≈0.80). An additional factor inc...

Our recent findings that floodplain ecosystems harbor the most fragile forests of the Amazon (1) was seen by Schöngart et al. (2) as an oversimplification of a complex ecosystem. They argue that the majority of floodplain forests are associated with fertile soils, and should therefore be highly resilient. Indeed, the differences between nutrient-rich white-water and nutrient-poor black-water sy...

River-floodplain systems are among the most diverse and productive ecosystems, but the effects of biophysical complexity at multiple scales on microbial biodiversity have not been studied. Here, we investigated how the hierarchical organization of river systems (i.e., region, floodplain, zone, habitats, and microhabitats) influences epilithic biofilm community assemblage patterns by characteriz...