Southern Research Station

Title: Large-scale effects of timber harvesting on stream systems in the Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas, USA

Author: Williams, Lance R.; Taylor, Christopher M.; Warren, Melvin L., Jr.; Clingenpeel, J. Alan

Date: 2002

Source: Environmental Management. 29 (1): 76-87

Description: Using Basin Area Stream Survey (BASS) data from the USDA Forest Service, we evaluated how tim-ber harvesting influenced patterns of variation in physical stream features and regional fish and macroinvertebrate as-semblages. Data were collected for three years (1990-1992) from six hydrologically variable streams in the Ouachita Moun-tains, AR, USA that were paired by management regime within three drainage basins. Specifically, we used multivariate techniques to partition variability in assemblage structure (taxonomic and trophic) that could be explained by timber har-vesting, drainage basin differences, year-to-year variability, and their shared variance components. Most of the variation in fish assemblages was explained by drainage basin differ-ences, and both basin and year-of-sampling influenced mac-roinvertebrate assemblages. All three factors modeled, includ-ing interactions between drainage basins and timber harvesting, influenced variability in physical stream features. Interactions between timber harvesting and drainage basins indicated that differences in physical stream features were important in determining the effects of logging within a basin. The lack of a logging effect on the biota contradicts predic-tions for these small, hydrologically variable streams. We be-lieve this pattern is related to the large scale of this study and the high levels of natural variability in the streams. Alternatively, there may be time-specific effects we were unable to detect with our sampling design and analyses.

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Citation

Williams, Lance R.; Taylor, Christopher M.; Warren, Melvin L., Jr.; Clingenpeel, J. Alan  2002.  Large-scale effects of timber harvesting on stream systems in the Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas, USA.   Environmental Management. 29 (1): 76-87