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FRAGMENTATION OF RIPARIAN FLORAS IN RIVERS WITH MULTIPLE DAMS
Author(s) -
Jansson Roland,
Nilsson Christer,
Renöfält Birgitta
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[0899:forfir]2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - riparian zone , biological dispersal , fragmentation (computing) , ecology , geography , habitat fragmentation , ecosystem , habitat , environmental science , biology , population , demography , sociology
Rivers are increasingly fragmented by dams, resulting in disruption of natural dispersal pathways and subsequent changes of riverine communities. We assessed the effect of dams as barriers to plant dispersal along rivers by comparing the flora of vascular plants between pairs of run‐of‐river impoundments in northern Sweden. Adjacent impoundments in similar environmental settings develop different riparian floras because species with poor floating capacity become unevenly distributed among impoundments. Such discontinuities were not found along a free‐flowing river, suggesting effective dispersal of riparian plants in the absence of dams. Given that dams regulate most of the world's rivers, floristic disruptions of riparian corridors may be a global phenomenon. The extensive fragmentation of other ecosystems may have caused similar obstructions to organism dispersal, with subsequent changes in species composition.