Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains?
Beaver have expanded in their native habitats throughout the northern hemisphere in recent decades following reductions in trapping and reintroduction efforts. Beaver have the potential to strongly influence salmon populations in the side channels of large alluvial rivers by building dams that creat...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5012414 2023-05-15T16:59:25+02:00 Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? Malison, Rachel L. Kuzishchin, Kirill V. Stanford, Jack A. 2016-09-01 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5012414/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5012414/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 ©2016 Malison et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY Fisheries and Fish Science Text 2016 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 2016-09-18T00:12:56Z Beaver have expanded in their native habitats throughout the northern hemisphere in recent decades following reductions in trapping and reintroduction efforts. Beaver have the potential to strongly influence salmon populations in the side channels of large alluvial rivers by building dams that create pond complexes. Pond habitat may improve salmon productivity or the presence of dams may reduce productivity if dams limit habitat connectivity and inhibit fish passage. Our intent in this paper is to contrast the habitat use and production of juvenile salmon on expansive floodplains of two geomorphically similar salmon rivers: the Kol River in Kamchatka, Russia (no beavers) and the Kwethluk River in Alaska (abundant beavers), and thereby provide a case study on how beavers may influence salmonids in large floodplain rivers. We examined important rearing habitats in each floodplain, including springbrooks, beaver ponds, beaver-influenced springbrooks, and shallow shorelines of the river channel. Juvenile coho salmon dominated fish assemblages in all habitats in both rivers but other species were present. Salmon density was similar in all habitat types in the Kol, but in the Kwethluk coho and Chinook densities were 3–12× lower in mid- and late-successional beaver ponds than in springbrook and main channel habitats. In the Kol, coho condition (length: weight ratios) was similar among habitats, but Chinook condition was highest in orthofluvial springbrooks. In the Kwethluk, Chinook condition was similar among habitats, but coho condition was lowest in main channel versus other habitats (0.89 vs. 0.99–1.10). Densities of juvenile salmon were extremely low in beaver ponds located behind numerous dams in the orthofluvial zone of the Kwethluk River floodplain, whereas juvenile salmon were abundant in habitats throughout the entire floodplain in the Kol River. If beavers were not present on the Kwethluk, floodplain habitats would be fully interconnected and theoretically could produce 2× the biomass (between June–August, ... Text Kamchatka Alaska PubMed Central (PMC) Beaver Ponds ENVELOPE(-57.841,-57.841,49.642,49.642) Kol’ ENVELOPE(155.946,155.946,53.834,53.834) PeerJ 4 e2403 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Fisheries and Fish Science |
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Fisheries and Fish Science Malison, Rachel L. Kuzishchin, Kirill V. Stanford, Jack A. Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
topic_facet |
Fisheries and Fish Science |
description |
Beaver have expanded in their native habitats throughout the northern hemisphere in recent decades following reductions in trapping and reintroduction efforts. Beaver have the potential to strongly influence salmon populations in the side channels of large alluvial rivers by building dams that create pond complexes. Pond habitat may improve salmon productivity or the presence of dams may reduce productivity if dams limit habitat connectivity and inhibit fish passage. Our intent in this paper is to contrast the habitat use and production of juvenile salmon on expansive floodplains of two geomorphically similar salmon rivers: the Kol River in Kamchatka, Russia (no beavers) and the Kwethluk River in Alaska (abundant beavers), and thereby provide a case study on how beavers may influence salmonids in large floodplain rivers. We examined important rearing habitats in each floodplain, including springbrooks, beaver ponds, beaver-influenced springbrooks, and shallow shorelines of the river channel. Juvenile coho salmon dominated fish assemblages in all habitats in both rivers but other species were present. Salmon density was similar in all habitat types in the Kol, but in the Kwethluk coho and Chinook densities were 3–12× lower in mid- and late-successional beaver ponds than in springbrook and main channel habitats. In the Kol, coho condition (length: weight ratios) was similar among habitats, but Chinook condition was highest in orthofluvial springbrooks. In the Kwethluk, Chinook condition was similar among habitats, but coho condition was lowest in main channel versus other habitats (0.89 vs. 0.99–1.10). Densities of juvenile salmon were extremely low in beaver ponds located behind numerous dams in the orthofluvial zone of the Kwethluk River floodplain, whereas juvenile salmon were abundant in habitats throughout the entire floodplain in the Kol River. If beavers were not present on the Kwethluk, floodplain habitats would be fully interconnected and theoretically could produce 2× the biomass (between June–August, ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Malison, Rachel L. Kuzishchin, Kirill V. Stanford, Jack A. |
author_facet |
Malison, Rachel L. Kuzishchin, Kirill V. Stanford, Jack A. |
author_sort |
Malison, Rachel L. |
title |
Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
title_short |
Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
title_full |
Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
title_fullStr |
Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
title_sort |
do beaver dams reduce habitat connectivity and salmon productivity in expansive river floodplains? |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5012414/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-57.841,-57.841,49.642,49.642) ENVELOPE(155.946,155.946,53.834,53.834) |
geographic |
Beaver Ponds Kol’ |
geographic_facet |
Beaver Ponds Kol’ |
genre |
Kamchatka Alaska |
genre_facet |
Kamchatka Alaska |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5012414/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 |
op_rights |
©2016 Malison et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2403 |
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PeerJ |
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4 |
container_start_page |
e2403 |
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1766051686452822016 |