Journal
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
Volume 479, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118531
Keywords
Best Management Practices (BMPs); Dissolved oxygen (DO); Forest management; Forest Practices Act (FPA); Riparian management; Water quality standards
Categories
Funding
- National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc.
- Weyerhaeuser Company
- Oregon State University Watersheds Research Cooperative
- Oregon State University Fish and Wildlife in Managed Forests Program
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The concentration of dissolved oxygen in water affects aquatic organisms. Unrestrained logging and site preparation can depress dissolved oxygen concentrations in adjacent streams, but management practices can mitigate these effects.
The concentration of oxygen dissolved in water affects aquatic organisms. Unrestrained logging and site preparation can depress dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations in adjacent streams by elevating temperatures (with removal of riparian shade), impounding channels (reduced reaeration rates), and introducing fresh, oxygen depleting slash. One of the first paired watershed studies investigating the use of streamside management zones, the Alsea Watershed Study (AWS) in coastal Oregon (1958-1973), highlighted the potential to depress DO concentrations in streams adjacent to harvest units. This and other studies spurred development of Best Management Practices (BMPs) and forest practice rules to maintain, among other things, favorable DO concentrations in streams. A new study of the Alsea watersheds (2006-2015) found little signal of management effects on DO concentrations. It did find that a discontinuously perennial stream (where reaches go subsurface during low flows) can experience naturally low DO concentrations. Forest managers can avoid exacerbating low DO conditions using simple BMPs, but discontinuously perennial forest streams are predisposed to low DO concentrations.
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