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The use of historical environmental monitoring data to test predictions on cross-scale ecological responses to alterations in river flows

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Abstract

Determination of ecological responses to river flows is fundamental to understanding how flow-dependent ecosystems have been altered by regulation, water diversions and climate change, and how to effect river restoration. Knowledge of ecohydrological relationships can support water management and policy, but this is not always the case. Management rules have tended to be developed ahead of scientific knowledge. The lag between practice and knowledge could be addressed by using historical monitoring data on ecological responses to changes in flows to determine significant empirical ecohydrological relationships, as an adjunct to investigating responses prospectively. This possibility was explored in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia. We assessed 359 data sets collected during monitoring programs across the basin. Of these, only 32 (9%) were considered useful, based on a match between the scale at which sampling was done and ecological responses are likely to occur, and used to test flow–ecology predictions for phytoplankton, macroinvertebrates, fishes, waterbirds, floodplain trees, basin-scale vegetation and estuarine biota. We found relationships between flow and ecological responses were likely to be more strongly supported for large, long-lived, widespread biota (waterbirds, basin-scale vegetation, native fishes), than for more narrowly distributed (e.g. estuarine fishes) or smaller, short-lived organisms (e.g. phytoplankton, macroinvertebrates). This pattern is attributed to a mismatch between the design of monitoring programs and the response time frames of individual biota and processes, and to the use of local river discharge as a primary predictor variable when, for many biotic groups, other predictors need to be considered.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Water Commission and CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship. We thank Richard Davis and Anthea Brecknell (National Water Commission) for advice and encouragement during the project and Darryl Nielsen (Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre) and an anonymous reviewer for their practical and constructive reviews of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Matthew J. Colloff & Julian R. W. Reid

  2. CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Matthew J. Colloff & Susan M. Cuddy

  3. Natural Economy Research and Consulting, Adelaide, SA, 5062, Australia

    Ian C. Overton

  4. CSIRO Land and Water, Private Bag 2, Glen Osmond, SA, 5604, Australia

    Ian C. Overton, Roderick L. Oliver & Tanya M. Doody

  5. CSIRO Data61, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Brent L. Henderson

  6. PO Box 6191, O’Connor, ACT, 2602, Australia

    Jane Roberts

  7. Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics and Sciences, 44 Mort Street, Canberra, ACT, 2612, Australia

    Anthony D. Arthur

  8. CSIRO Land and Water, Box 312, Clayton South, VIC, 3169, Australia

    Neil C. Sims

  9. Aquatic Sciences, South Australian Research and Development Institute, PO Box 120, Adelaide, SA, 5022, Australia

    Qifeng Ye

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  1. Matthew J. Colloff
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  2. Ian C. Overton
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  3. Brent L. Henderson
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  4. Jane Roberts
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  6. Roderick L. Oliver
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  9. Neil C. Sims
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  10. Qifeng Ye
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  11. Susan M. Cuddy
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Correspondence to Matthew J. Colloff.

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Colloff, M.J., Overton, I.C., Henderson, B.L. et al. The use of historical environmental monitoring data to test predictions on cross-scale ecological responses to alterations in river flows. Aquat Ecol 52, 133–153 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-018-9650-y

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