Leaves indicate river health
The study showed that monitoring leaf litter breakdown was a reliable assessment of river health, and could be used alongside established techniques. Image: Nikada/iStockphoto A continent-wide survey of Europe's waterways has recommended better ways to monitor how rivers are responding to organic pollution and other pressures arising from human activity.Published in Science, the large-scale collaboration between several researchers included Dr Sally Hladyz from Monash University's School of Biological Sciences. The researchers looked at leaf litter breakdown rates as an indicator of river health.Leaf litter breakdown rates give important insights into how the river ecosystem is functioning, which cannot be achieved by looking only at water quality or fish communities.The teams deployed 2400 mesh litter bags to monitor the breakdown rates in 100 European streams across streams with varying levels of organic pollution.Results indicated that water quality measured from nutrient concentrations was a good predictor of breakdown rates at the extremes of very...