Plant Diversity Contributions of Riparian Areas in Watersheds of the Northern Lake States, USA

Abstract

In most forested watersheds, riparian areas constitute a small proportion of the total land area, yet their contributions to overall plant diversity can be significant. However, little information is available on which portion of riparian areas (defined as functional ecotones comprising all fluvial landforms, including floodplains, terraces, and connecting hillslopes) contribute the most to plant species richness and at what scale these contributions are most evident. In order to better understand the contributions riparian areas provide to plant species richness in forested watersheds, we examined herbaceous ground-flora richness and similarity from 56 reaches in eight different valley types (defined as unique combinations of stream order, surficial geology, and stream-valley constraint) across the northern Lake States, USA. We analyzed these data at two scales: (1) at the individual reach scale; and (2) at the watershed scale by pooling individual reaches by valley type. At the reach scale and regardless of valley type, there is not significant (

Citation

Goebel, P. Charles; Palik, Brain J.; Pregitzer, Kurt S. 2003. Plant Diversity Contributions of Riparian Areas in Watersheds of the Northern Lake States, USA. Ecological Applications 13(6):1595-1609