How do we assess the health of rivers when they are dry? – Solutions using a novel approach — ASN Events
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  3. How do we assess the health of rivers when they are dry? – Solutions using a novel approach

How do we assess the health of rivers when they are dry? – Solutions using a novel approach (#199)

Alisha L Steward 1 2 , Jonathan C Marshall 1 2 , Peter Negus 2 , Sara Clifford 2 , Catherine Dent 2
  1. Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  2. Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, Queensland Government, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Rivers and streams that dry up are found on every continent, and can form a large proportion of river networks. When they are dry, traditional indicators of river health, such as aquatic macroinvertebrates, fish or water quality, cannot be sampled. Dry river beds can be the ‘typical’ state of many temporary rivers; however, the ecological health of these habitats is rarely, if at all, assessed in monitoring programs. Aquatic indicators can and have been used to assess wetted habitats, but currently no known terrestrial indicators have been developed or are in use to assess dry river health. A novel solution to assessing rivers when they are dry could be to use terrestrial biota as indicators.

We trialled the use of terrestrial invertebrates as indicators of dry river health in the Cooper Creek catchment – a large, dryland river system in Central Australia – and found that terrestrial invertebrate communities responded to a gradient of disturbance, based on land cover. Our aim for this study was to apply the findings of the Cooper Creek trial to the assessment of the Queensland portion of the Murray-Darling Basin. Our results were confirmed and the assessments were successful in identifying impacted sites.

We conclude that terrestrial invertebrates are appropriate indicators of dry river health, in the same way that indicators such as aquatic macroinvertebrates are traditionally used to assess river health. These indicators of dry and wet habitats could be combined to provide a holistic assessment of the condition of temporary river ecosystems.

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