Riparian: What is Riparian Ecology
Riparian ecosystems, land areas adjacent to waterways, are uniquely characterized by high species diversity, high species density and high productivity. (Johnson and McCormick 1979) Every body of water on this planet, from Lake Erie to the little trickle of a stream outside your back door, is a part of a riparian ecosystem. Rivers and streams are not simply drainage conduits for the conveyance of water from agricultural fields, or the providers of our drinking water supplies and the receptors of our waste. Instead, rivers and streams are examples of the more visible parts of an infinite network of interconnections that have largely gone unstudied. It is time to see and study our streams as part of a greater ecosystem, an ecosystem which we impact daily and which we can have an active role in understanding, appreciating and being a part. This then is a look at the ecology of the riparian areas adjacent to running waters.

The riparian areas are generally thought of as that area of land that borders our waterways and embraces the transition between water and the upland. These areas may be referred to as riparian corridors, riparian zones, buffer areas or filter strips. In a natural state, these land areas were once directly connected to more upland areas such as terraces, prairies and woodlands. Today, as the demand for land has caused the clearing of floodplains, the construction of highways through valleys and the draining of woodland swamps, what is left are very narrow corridors of vegetation along the stream banks. As a result of the changes inflicted upon riparian areas, the ecology is dramatically changing.

The ecosystem in the riparian area is unique and different from upland woods and prairies in a number of ways. First, the diversity of plants and animals is disproportionately high as compared to an upland forest ecosystem. Birds and mammals come to riparian areas for water and to eat the insects and amphibians that find habitat in the water. Riparian areas also filter the sediment and nutrients from surface water before they run into a stream. The leaves and other organic matter from the stream's edge become food and energy sources for the macroinvertebrates, bacteria, insects and fish. The riparian area plays a much more important role in the headwater stream nutrient and energy cycling. Small streams are much more sensitive to corridor disturbance than larger river systems.

Finally, plants and animals travel along riparian corridors. Through flooding and ice scours, the individual species of plants from a specific location are distributed and it is possible for the overall richness of this "shifting mosaic" to continue. In fact, this very flooding contributes not only to the fertility of the riparian flood plain, but to the travel and deposit of rich assemblages of plant species including annuals, weedy ruderals, native and non-native species that do not otherwise live together (Spackman and Hughes 1995).

Recognizing how the riparian area interacts with the stream in different temperate scales, Robin Vannote, the Stroud Water Research Center's first director, presented his River Continuum Concept (RCC) to an awed crowd in the early 1970s. The concept did not just materialize; Vannote drew from areas both within and outside of his field. The River Continuum Concept describes the physical processes (geology, climate) outside of a river that affect the biological processes (vegetation) along a river, which affect the physical and biological processes within a river (temperature, nutrients).
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