Macroinvertebrate habitat requirements in rivers: overestimation of environmental flow calculations in incised rivers

Kędzior, Renata; Kłonowska-Olejnik, Małgorzata; Dumnicka, Elżbieta; Woś, Agnieszka; Wyrębek, Maciej; Książek, Leszek; Grela, Jerzy; Madej, Paweł; Skalski, Tomasz

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-4109-2022

Articles | Volume 26, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-4109-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-4109-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 26, issue 15

Research article

|

08 Aug 2022

Research article |

| 08 Aug 2022

Macroinvertebrate habitat requirements in rivers: overestimation of environmental flow calculations in incised rivers

Renata Kędzior, Małgorzata Kłonowska-Olejnik, Elżbieta Dumnicka, Agnieszka Woś, Maciej Wyrębek, Leszek Książek, Jerzy Grela, Paweł Madej, and Tomasz Skalski

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Aug 2022)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 May 2021)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on hess-2021-196', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Jul 2021

General Comments:

The authors test the influence of river incision on environmental flow estimation based on the macroinvertebrate index using data from 12 waterbodies in Poland.

The topic is interesting and is one of the emerging trends in environmental and ecological studies.

The introductory remarks justify the theme and are well presented.

I suggest to add few sentences to better introduce environmental/minimum flow estimation.

The other background information are up to date and provide sufficient informations to put this work in the international context.

The sampling campaign is well described in the methods and is suitable for the aim of the study.

The statistical analyses should be described in detail to be possible to evaluate their robustness, I would expect a substantial revised paragraph in the next version.

Discussion and conclusion sections are generally well written, supported by the results but sould be compared with the corrent literature and putted in the international context.

Detailed comments:

See the attached PDF with comments

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-196-RC1
- AC1:
  'Reply on RC1', Tomasz Skalski, 30 Nov 2021
  
  Dear revewer, detailed responses are included in zip file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-196-AC1
  - AC3: 'Reply on AC1', Tomasz Skalski, 20 Dec 2021
    
    The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://hess.copernicus.org/preprints/hess-2021-196/hess-2021-196-AC3-supplement.pdf
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-196-AC3
RC2:
'Comment on hess-2021-196', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Oct 2021
General comments

The authors used macroinvertebrate sampling, environmental measurements, and hydraulic habitat modelling to compare calculated environmental flow requirements between incised rivers of various types and rivers with sediment deposition. The topic is novel and interesting, but the methods are inadequately explained (please see detailed comments below) and sometimes appear inappropriate. In addition, parts of the manuscript are quite difficult to understand.

Areas of particular concern are:

(1) Insufficient background information, such as the nature and causes of the incision and sedimentation.

(2) The use of a pollution-oriented biotic index (BMWP) as a biotic response variable rather than a flow-oriented index such as LIFE (Lotic-invertebrate Index for Flow Evaluation).

(3) Reference to WUA (presumably weighted usable area) without explanation of which species and life-history stage it was calculated for and how.

(4) Incorporation of multiple statistical testing that is likely to increase type I error and does not seem necessary to address the stated study aims.

(5) Lack of discussion of limitations of the methods used.

Specific comments referenced by line number(s)

15-29. The abstract is quite poorly written and structured and often difficult to understand.

Which measurable variable(s) does “water flow intensity” refer to? Discharge? Velocity? Stream power?

There is no need to include “multispecies”. By definition, and ecological community comprises multiple species.

The morphology of what?

What is an “incision dam”?

Perhaps “characteristics” rather than “values”.

56-57. Q should be defined and a citation should be provided for the use of discharge curves.

The methods referred to have also been applied to other organisms, particularly fish.

76-77. I cannot find anything in the manuscript that considers macroinvertebrate habitat preferences. Habitat preference varies among species and their life-history stages, and the manuscript does not consider individual species and stages.

80-82. The intended meaning of “to identify a scale of e-flow overestimation” and “overestimation of e-flow calculations” is not clear to me.

Why did you sample only mountain rivers when your objectives (line 78) refer to mountain and lowland rivers? Also, why did you select these particular river types and sites?

97-109. The river categories are variously referred to as classes, groups and types. It would be better to stick to a consistent term.

Some detail about the incision in these rivers would be informative, for example the spatial extent and rates of incision and deposition and the extent to which these processes are natural or induced by anthropogenic changes in land cover, land use and flow regimes.

Please explain what the substrate index measures and how it is calculated.

I do not understand the reason for using the BMWP index because it is related to pollution rather than flow velocity. Why did you not use a flow-specific index such as LIFE (Lotic-invertebrate Index for Flow Evaluation)?

KsiÄÅ¼ek et al. (2019) is in Polish and therefore will not be accessible to most potential international readers. You could perhaps refer to Gippel and Stewardson (1998, Regulated Rivers: Research and Management).

How did you define low flow? What threshold was used and why?

What procedure did you use to ensure the choice was random.

For Fig. 2, please tell the reader what delta h and F represent and how they were calculated.

For Fig. 3, please explain what the error bars represent.

The acronym WUA (presumably referring to weighted usable area) needs to be explained.

How did you calculate weighted usable area? It is normally defined with respect to a particular life-history stage of a particular species, and calculated from its preferences for velocity, depth and substratum.

What thresholds were used to classify depth and velocity as low, medium and high, and on what basis were the thresholds chosen?

Did you apply any transformation to raw abundance values before calculating the Bray-Curtis index?

219-229. Text in this paragraph is often hard to follow. In addition, there is statistical problem of multiple testing (32 separate tests in Table 2), which increases the type I error rate. Also, it is very well known that stream invertebrate assemblages vary according to velocity and depth, and unclear why all of these analyses are need to fulfil the study aims.

232-233. The fact that the relationship of the BMWP index to depth and velocity is so variable further indicates to me that it is not a suitable biological response variable for the purposes of this study.

How was similarity calculated?

Please explain what the various symbols (dots, lines, boxes) in Fig. 6 represent.

281-285. What do the percentages in Fig. 8 represent? Percentages of what?

302 and elsewhere. Habitat for what? Different species have different habitat requirements and what is suitable for one species at one life-history stage may be unsuitable for another species and life history stage, or even another life-history stage of the same species.

338-339. Because this conclusion seems rather paradoxical, I suggest that you should discuss the limitations of your method. Various types of habitat simulation methods have received significant evaluation and criticism (see for example Gan & MacMahon 1990, Regulated Rivers: Research and Management; Parasiewicz and Walker JD 2007, River Research and Applications; Railsback 2017, Fisheries; Yi et al. 2017, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-196-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Tomasz Skalski, 30 Nov 2021
  
  Dear revewer, detailed responses are included in pdf file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2021-196-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (01 Jan 2022) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Tomasz Skalski on behalf of the Authors (14 Jan 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (14 Jan 2022) by Loes van Schaik

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Mar 2022) by Loes van Schaik

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 Mar 2022)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (12 Apr 2022)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I find the manuscript improved since the previous version, and more comprehensible, but significant problems remain. In particular, the authors are applying the concepts of “habitat”, “weighted usable area”, and “biological diversity” inappropriately.

Please see references listed below regarding correct use of the word “habitat” and related terms. Habitat is organism-specific, and defined as the resources and conditions that enable a particular organism to occupy a particular place. It is not a term than can be applied to a community (e.g., revised manuscript, line 85) and the BMWP_PL index is not a measure of “habitat suitability” (lines 152-158). Indeed, phrases such as “suitable habitat” (e.g., line 28) and “usable habitat” (e.g., line 205) should not be used – the words “suitable” and “usable” are redundant because if an area is not suitable or usable for an organism, it is not part of its habitat. In short, “habitat” should be removed from the manuscript because the authors do not assess the extent or quality of habitat for any particular organism.

Similarly, the term “Weighted Usable Area (WUA)” (e.g., line 232) is meaningless without reference to the particular organisms the area is usable for. An area that is usable for one organism is not usable for some other organisms, because different species and life-history stages have different environmental requirements. And the BMWP_PL index is not a measure of the area that is usable for any organism. Therefore, the authors should also remove reference to WUA.

What the authors have done is not to assess ”habitat suitability” or “weighted usable area” but rather to model the discharge that maximises the value of the BMWP_PL index. However, they have not articulated a rationale for doing so. They state that the purpose of environmental flow is to “maintain biological diversity in the river ecosystem” (lines 46-47). But the concept of biodiversity is multi-scaled and multi-faceted - please see Rolls et al. (2018), referenced below, for an overview of the scales and facets of biodiversity relevant to environmental flows. Biodiversity is not equivalent to the value of a biotic index just because the index incorporates species with varied environmental preferences (lines 132-133). If maintaining biodiversity is the goal. the authors need to justify their index choice by explaining which scale(s) and facet(s) of biodiversity the BMWP_PL index predicts, on what evidence, and why BMWP_PL is a better indicator of these scales and facets of biodiversity than alternative indices or metrics.

I also note that while the authors have provided responses to my previous comments, in several cases they have not made corresponding changes to the manuscript. For example, the tautological phrase “multispecies communities” is still present (line 38), the definitions of “low low flow” and “mean low flow” (line 175) have not been incorporated, the procedure for random selection of the case-study site is still not stated (line 179). The authors should make changes in response to every previous comment, or else provide a reason for not making a change.

References
Bamford M, Calver M (2014). A precise definition of habitat is needed for effective conservation and communication. Australian Zoologist 37, 245-247.
Darracq AK, Tandy J (2019). Misuse of habitat terminology by wildlife educators, scientists, and organizations. Journal of Wildlife Management 83(4), 782–789.
Kirk DA, Park AC, Smith AC, Howes BJ, Prouse BK, Kyssa NG, Fairhurst EN, Prior KA (2018). Our use, misuse, and abandonment of a concept: whither habitat? Ecology and Evolution 8, 4197-4208.
Krausman, P. R., & Morrison, M. L. (2016). Another plea for standard terminology. Journal of Wildlife Management 80(7), 1143–1144.
Rolls RJ, Heino J, Ryder DS, Chessman BC, Growns IO, Thompson RM, Gido KB (2018). Scaling biodiversity responses to hydrological regimes. Biological Reviews 93, 971-995.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (22 Apr 2022) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Tomasz Skalski on behalf of the Authors (08 May 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Jul 2022) by Loes van Schaik

Short summary

The river incision significantly increased the values of e-flow calculations in relation to redeposited channels. The area of optimal habitat for macroinvertebrates decreased with the bed incision intensity. In highly incised rivers, the environmental flow values are close to the mean annual flow, suggesting that a high volume of water is needed to obtain good macroinvertebrate conditions. As a consequence, river downcutting processes and impoverishment of optimal habitats will proceed.