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MODELING VARIABLE-WIDTH RIPARIAN BUFFERS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO WOODY DEBRIS RECRUITMENT
Citation:
Van Sickle, J. MODELING VARIABLE-WIDTH RIPARIAN BUFFERS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO WOODY DEBRIS RECRUITMENT. Int'l Conf on Riparian Ecology & Mgmt in Multi-land Use Watersheds, Portland, OR, August 27-31, 2000.
Description:
Effective management of riparian areas in watersheds requires that reach-scale knowlege of riparian functioning be carefully "scaled up" to provide models for entire stream networks. Weller et al. (1998: Ecological Applications 8, 1156-1169) describe a useful heuristic model for the network-scale average transmission of landscape runoff materials through a variable-width riparian buffer. Their model demonstrates that a variable width buffer is likely to transmit more runoff materials, on average, from adjacent landscapes into a stream than would a fixed-width buffer of the same mean width. By extending the Weller et al. (1998) model, I show that analogous results are true for arbitrary distributions of buffer widths and for other riparian functions such as woody debris input and stream shading. I apply the extended model to woody debris recruitment from natural tree-fall in variable-width riparian forest stands. The appliction suggests that the average number and volume of tree boles falling into a stream network will be overestimated, if the estimate is based on the average width of the network's riparian stands.