Journal
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 652, Issue -, Pages 66-74Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.218
Keywords
Freshwater biodiversity; Urbanization; Agriculture; Impoundment; Erosion; Multiple stressors
Categories
Funding
- Bavarian Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection [54-0270-71442/2014]
- Bavarian Environmental Agency
- Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Intensification of catchment land-use and the corresponding habitat degradation pose a threat to freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem health, yet few studies comprehensively quantified the effects of specific land-use variables on fish communities for different catchments within the same climatic region. Herein, we investigated the influence of catchment land use on fish community composition in the headwater areas of the European main river systems Elbe, Danube and Main/Rhine. The analyses comprising 289 streams and rivers in Bavaria, southern Germany, revealed that the influence of urbanization (e.g. ground sealing), potamalisation (impoundment of water courses), and erosion-prone, agricultural land-use types (e.g. root crop, maize) were significantly related to the fish community composition. In addition, multiple stressors were effective indicators and their importance differed between survey-area scales, geographical regions, and stream sizes. The findings suggest that terrestrial effects of land-use and urbanization need to be more strongly considered in the conservation of endangered stream fishes, ideally including combined measures of erosion control, restoration of environmental flows and mitigation of structural degradation. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available