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Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria

Upland rivers across Europe still exhibit undisturbed conditions and represent a treasure that we cannot afford to lose. We hypothesize that the combination of pristine and modified conditions could demonstrate biological responses along the stressor gradients. Thus, the response of aquatic macrophy...

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Autores principales: Gecheva, Gana, Pall, Karin, Todorov, Milcho, Traykov, Ivan, Gribacheva, Nikolina, Stankova, Silviya, Birk, Sebastian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8703415/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34961179
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants10122708
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author Gecheva, Gana
Pall, Karin
Todorov, Milcho
Traykov, Ivan
Gribacheva, Nikolina
Stankova, Silviya
Birk, Sebastian
author_facet Gecheva, Gana
Pall, Karin
Todorov, Milcho
Traykov, Ivan
Gribacheva, Nikolina
Stankova, Silviya
Birk, Sebastian
author_sort Gecheva, Gana
collection PubMed
description Upland rivers across Europe still exhibit undisturbed conditions and represent a treasure that we cannot afford to lose. We hypothesize that the combination of pristine and modified conditions could demonstrate biological responses along the stressor gradients. Thus, the response of aquatic macrophyte communities to anthropogenic stressors along upland rivers in Bulgaria was studied. Six stressors were selected out of 36 parameters grouped into hydromorphological, chemical variables and combined drivers (catchment land use). The stressors strongly affected species richness on the basis of biological type (bryophytes vs. vascular plants) and ecomorphological type (hydrophytes vs. helophytes). Hydrological alteration expressed by the change of the river’s base flow and altered riparian habitats has led to a suppression of bryophytes and a dominance of riverbank plant communities. Seventy-five percent of mountain sites were lacking bryophytes, and the vegetation at semi-mountainous sites was dominated by vascular plants. It can be concluded that hydropeaking, organic and inorganic pollution, and discontinuous urban structures caused important modifications in the aquatic macrophyte assemblages. Macrophyte abundance and the biological and ecomorphological type of aquatic macrophytes reflect multi-stressor effects in upland rivers.
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spelling pubmed-87034152021-12-25 Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria Gecheva, Gana Pall, Karin Todorov, Milcho Traykov, Ivan Gribacheva, Nikolina Stankova, Silviya Birk, Sebastian Plants (Basel) Article Upland rivers across Europe still exhibit undisturbed conditions and represent a treasure that we cannot afford to lose. We hypothesize that the combination of pristine and modified conditions could demonstrate biological responses along the stressor gradients. Thus, the response of aquatic macrophyte communities to anthropogenic stressors along upland rivers in Bulgaria was studied. Six stressors were selected out of 36 parameters grouped into hydromorphological, chemical variables and combined drivers (catchment land use). The stressors strongly affected species richness on the basis of biological type (bryophytes vs. vascular plants) and ecomorphological type (hydrophytes vs. helophytes). Hydrological alteration expressed by the change of the river’s base flow and altered riparian habitats has led to a suppression of bryophytes and a dominance of riverbank plant communities. Seventy-five percent of mountain sites were lacking bryophytes, and the vegetation at semi-mountainous sites was dominated by vascular plants. It can be concluded that hydropeaking, organic and inorganic pollution, and discontinuous urban structures caused important modifications in the aquatic macrophyte assemblages. Macrophyte abundance and the biological and ecomorphological type of aquatic macrophytes reflect multi-stressor effects in upland rivers. MDPI 2021-12-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8703415/ /pubmed/34961179 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants10122708 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Gecheva, Gana
Pall, Karin
Todorov, Milcho
Traykov, Ivan
Gribacheva, Nikolina
Stankova, Silviya
Birk, Sebastian
Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title_full Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title_fullStr Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title_full_unstemmed Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title_short Anthropogenic Stressors in Upland Rivers: Aquatic Macrophyte Responses. A Case Study from Bulgaria
title_sort anthropogenic stressors in upland rivers: aquatic macrophyte responses. a case study from bulgaria
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8703415/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34961179
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants10122708
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