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ms have reduced distribution of the endangered Colorado pikeminnow Ptychocheilus lucius in the upper Colorado River basin: low-head diversion dams blocked upstream passage and large dams inundated free-flowing segments and cooled downstream reaches with deep-water releases. To date, range restoration efforts in the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers have focused on building fish ladders around diversion dams to allow recolonization of upstream reaches. Upstream thermal suitability for this warmwater cyprinid was assessed using temperature data and existing distributional information from river reaches where Colorado pikeminnow movements were unrestricted. Among-site thermal regime comparisons were made using mean annual...
Globally, rivers are increasingly being subjected to various levels of physical alteration and river regulation to provide humans with services such as hydropower, freshwater, flood control, irrigation and recreation. Although river regulation plays an important role in modern society, there are potential consequences which may negatively affect fish and fish habitat. While much effort has been expended examining the response of fish to fluctuating flow regimes in different systems, there has been little in the way of a comprehensive synthesis. In an effort to better understand the effects of river regulation on fish and fish habitat, we conducted a systematic review of available literature with three goals: (1)...
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Significant ecological, hydrologic, and geomorphic changes have occurred during the 20th century along many large floodplain rivers in the American Southwest. Native Populus forests have declined, while the exotic Eurasian shrub, Tamarix, has proliferated and now dominates most floodplain ecosystems. Photographs from late 19th and early 20th centuries illustrate wide river channels with largely bare in-channel landforms and shrubby higher channel margin floodplains. However, by the mid-20th century, floodplains supporting dense Tamarix stands had expanded, and river channels had narrowed. Along the lower Green River in eastern Utah, the causal mechanism of channel and floodplain changes remains ambiguous due to...
Alteration of natural flow regimes by river regulation affects fish distribution and assemblage structure, but causative pathways are not always direct and may go unrecognized. The Colorado River population of the endangered Colorado pikeminnow, Ptychocheilus lucius, suffers from low rates of recruitment and reduced carrying capacity. We hypothesized that availability of prey fish for this large-bodied native piscivore may, in part, be limited by reduced standing crops of periphyton and macroinvertebrates resulting from accumulation of fine sediment in the riverbed. We stratified the 373-km-long study area into 11 strata and sampled various physical and biological parameters in runs and riffles of three randomly...
In northwestern Colorado, flow regulation on the Green River has created a transitional plant community that features encroachment by upland vegetation into cottonwood (Populus fremontii)-dominated, riparian forest on topographically high floodplain sites and reduced cottonwood regeneration on low floodplain sites. To assess how these changes might have affected small mammal distributions, in 1994 and 1995 we live-trapped during periods surrounding spring flooding at 3 sites: above and below the confluence of the regulated Green River and at the ecologically similar, but unregulated, Yampa River (reference site). More species were captured at the most regulated site along the Green River above its confluence, with...
Significant ecological, hydrologic, and geomorphic changes have occurred during the 20th century along many large floodplain rivers in the American Southwest. Native Populus forests have declined, while the exotic Eurasian shrub, Tamarix, has proliferated and now dominates most floodplain ecosystems. Photographs from late 19th and early 20th centuries illustrate wide river channels with largely bare in-channel landforms and shrubby higher channel margin floodplains. However, by the mid-20th century, floodplains supporting dense Tamarix stands had expanded, and river channels had narrowed. Along the lower Green River in eastern Utah, the causal mechanism of channel and floodplain changes remains ambiguous due to...
During the 20th Century the flow of most rivers in the United States was regulated by diversions and dams, with major impacts on riparian forests. Few unregulated rivers remain to provide baseline information for assessing these impacts. We characterized patterns in riparian plant communities along chronosequences on the unregulated Yampa River and the regulated Green River in northwestern Colorado, examining patterns in plant species diversity in relation to the ages of floodplain terraces. On both rivers, mean plant species richness in cottonwood (Populus deltoides Marshall subsp. wislizenzii (Watson) Eckenwalder) dominated riparian forests declined by more than 50% from young sites (<20 years) to old upland terraces...
Decline of riparian forests has been attributed to hydrologic modifications to river flows. However, little is known about the physiological and structural adjustments of riparian forests subject to modified flow regimes, and the potential for forest restoration using historic flow regimes is poorly understood. In this paired river study, we compared hydrology, water relations, and forest structure in cottonwood-dominated floodplains of the regulated Green River to those of the unregulated Yampa River. We measured floodplain groundwater levels, soil water availability, cottonwood xylem pressure (Ψxp), and leaf-level stomatal conductance (gs) to assess current impacts of river regulation on the water status of adult...
Land and water resource development can independently eliminate riparian plant communities, including Fremont cottonwood forest (CF), a major contributor to ecosystem structure and functioning in semiarid portions of the American Southwest. We tested whether floodplain development was linked to river regulation in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) by relating the extent of five developed land-cover categories as well as CF and other natural vegetation to catchnient reservoir capacity, changes in total annual and annual peak discharge, and overall level of mainstem hydrologic alteration (sinall, moderate, or large) in 26 fourth-order subbasins. We also asked whether CF appeared to be in jeopardy at a regional...
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These data were compiled to assess the risk of erosion to archaeological site preservation. The objective of the study is to evaluate changes in archaeological site condition over time as a function of two geomorphology based conceptual models that evaluate the extent to which sites are potentially affected by 1) erosion from gullies, and 2) wind-driven (aeolian) supply of river-sourced sand, respectively. These data represent the results of two classification metrics, based on the two conceptual models, applied to a population of 362 archaeological sites over multiple decades. Both conceptual models numerically rank geomorphic conditions with class values of 1 representing the best potential for archaeological...
Categories: Data; Tags: Arizona, Colorado River, Geography, Geomorphology, Glen Canyon Dam, All tags...
Understanding the mechanisms by which nonnative species successfully in vade new regions and the consequences for native fauna is a pressing ecological issue, and one for which niche theory can play an important role. In this paper, we quantify a com prehensive suite of morphological, behavioral, physiological, trophic, and life-history traits for the entire fish species pool in the Colorado River Basin to explore a number of hypotheses regarding linkages between human-induced environmental change, the creation and mod ification of ecological niche opportunities, and subsequent invasion and extirpation of species over the past 150 years. Specifically, we use the fish life-history model of K. O. Winemiller and K....
    map background search result map search result map Processes of Tamarix invasion and floodplain development along the lower Green River, Utah. Aeolian and drainage classification data for various archaeological sites in Grand Canyon National Park along the Colorado River from 1973 to 2022 Aeolian and drainage classification data for various archaeological sites in Grand Canyon National Park along the Colorado River from 1973 to 2022 Processes of Tamarix invasion and floodplain development along the lower Green River, Utah.