Throughout history, rivers have carried a large amount of driftwood to the oceans. However, humans all over the world are increasingly interfering with this process. New research from Colorado State University (CSU) has found that disrupting the flow of driftwood from rivers to oceans can have a significant impact on marine ecosystems.
“Dead trees, known as big logs in rivers or driftwood in oceans, have become more valued since pioneering research in old-growth forests revealed the role of standing and felled dead wood in providing nutrients and habitats to a wide range of organisms,” the study authors wrote.
Driftwood also plays a crucial role when it reaches both freshwater ecosystems, such as those in rivers or lakes, and marine ecosystems. In the open ocean, driftwood provides vital habitat and food sources for a wide variety of organisms, including molluscs, fungi, crustaceans, and microbial communities.
“When driftwood sinks, it’s like a sunken coral reef,” said study lead author Ellen Wohl, a river geomorphologist at CSU. “Living creatures, mainly invertebrates, clams and crustaceans, use this wood as a refuge.”
Over the past few centuries, human activities have significantly reduced the timber supply to the oceans by altering every component of production, recruitment or transport. “As humans, we’ve been tweaking the wooden waterfall and breaking it for over a century,” Wohl said.
Driftwood is often removed in certain coastal areas, such as tourist beaches in the Mediterranean, without considering its crucial role for a variety of animals and plants, as well as sand movement.
“Small-scale human impacts, such as the removal of timber from a river, the drainage of a floodplain, and the logging of a slope, affect the entire river corridor on a much larger scale. said study co-author Emily Iskin, a doctoral student in the Department of Geosciences. at CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources. “Everything is connected. Traffic jams in a river are not only beneficial to this local ecosystem, but also provide downstream benefits offshore.
Professor Wohl hopes these findings will increase efforts to measure the flow of timber to the oceans from relatively undammed rivers such as the Yukon and Mackenzie in North America, or the Amazon and Congo in the tropics, and will help reduce human interaction with these essential natural processes.
The study is published in the journal Scientists progress.
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Through Andrei Ionescu, Terre.com Personal editor
