HR: 08:30h
AN: NB41F-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: An Overview of Hydrology, Habitats, Ecology, and Human Impacts in Coastal Plain Rivers of the Southeastern United States
AU: * Benke, A C
EM: abenke@biology.as.ua.edu
AF: University of Alabama, Department of Biological Sciences, Box 870206, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0206
AB: Coastal Plain rivers of the southeastern United States have a different physical template than most conceptual models of rivers, and such differences have a major influence on their ecological characteristics. Although some rivers originate in adjacent mountains or foothills, others arise entirely within the Coastal Plain. Regardless of origin, rivers from Texas to Virginia have many common features. Their Coastal Plain sections have a low gradient, and a tidewater influence extends many kilometers upstream. River beds are primarily shifting sandy beds, but submerged wood (snags) provides sites of high invertebrate diversity and production and a source of cover and food for fish assemblages of close to 100 species. Highest mean discharge occurs in winter and spring, the result of seasonal differences in evapotranspiration, resulting in extended (weeks or months) flooding of wide (several kilometers) floodplain wetlands that provide essential habitat for invertebrate and fish assemblages. Although some Coastal Plain rivers have been spared the impact of damming, those originating in mountains and foothills are typically dammed at and above the Fall Line, resulting in flow regimes that reduce essential floodplain interactions. Snagging and flow regulation have undoubtedly combined to greatly reduce diversity and productivity of most of these rivers.
DE: 1818 Evapotranspiration
DE: 1845 Limnology
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
DE: 1890 Wetlands
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly