October 1, 2015 In News

World Rivers Day: raising awarenes for the importance of temporary rivers

Thank you all!!!! Our call to send us pictures of temporary rivers, in order to point out the importance of temporary rivers, has been a success. We have received a total of 36 tweets from several countries showing a large variety of temporary rivers around the world.

or the river life, showing beautiful animals and plants living in these ecosystems.

 

Most of the pictures offered an instantaneous view of rivers showing their riverbeds and riparian zones. From these pictures we can tell many things of the temporary streams and rivers. For instance, we can classify the pictures received according to its AQUATIC STATE. The Aquatic state describes the hydrological situation of a stream taking in consideration how the flow may influence the community composition of streams. Five aquatic states are possible: Hyperheic (river in flood), Eurheic (river flowing, riffles are present), Oligorheic (river with a series of pools connected by tiny rivulets of water), Arheic (only pools present) and dry beds. For more information on this please check our previous website article on world rivers day.

Rivers in hyperheic state: floods
Usually this is a difficult picture to obtain, because sampling in a temporary river at the moment of floods is very dangerous. We received only 1 picture showing a temporary river during a flood. Floods are a key factor to understand the development of river communities and ecosystem processes.

The Eurheic state: when rivers are flowing

This is the usual flowing condition of permanent rivers, with pools and riffles. In most of the temporary rivers, biodiversity and community composition and function is similar to those of the permanent rivers, if eurheic state is maintained a relatively long time (2-3 months).

We received several pictures of beautiful permanent rivers:

And we love our temporary rivers flowing….small or large.