"River ecologist Ric Hauer is director of U. of Montana's Center for Integrated Research on the Environment".......... "He’s considered one of the leading experts on how rivers in the northern Rocky Mountains function".................Together with Harvey Locke, co-founder of the Yellowstone To Yukon Conservation Initiative, they have uncovered some dramatic new findings about gravel-bed river systems in the Rocky Mountains------- "Imagine that a river system from valley wall to valley wall being a big gravel sponge".............. "Sometimes that sponge is half-full of water"............. "Sometimes it’s totally soaked".............. "When it’s totally soaked, that’s a flood"................. "When it’s drying, you won’t see any water in the channel at all"............. "But it’s not about the channel. It’s that whole wide system"..................... "The influence of gravel-bed rivers like the Clark Fork or the Bitterroot extend far beyond their banks"..............."Water seeps through the cobbles and boulders underground for hundreds, even a thousand meters beyond the riverbank"....................... "In spring runoff, the water spreads out and nourishes plant and microbe communities throughout its floodplain"................ "Water flowing back into the main channel leaves behind impurities as it filters its way through the gravel"................"That underground flow stays insulated from the surface weather, staying cool in summer and unfrozen in winter"............... "Interfere with that process, and a delicate web of life unravels"................"Why does this matter?".............. "Because in the Rocky Mountains, gravel-bed rivers make up about 3 percent of the landscape"................. "But they’re home to 60 percent of the plants and animals that live here".............. "Of the 235 bird species native to the northern Rockies, 200 of them spend a significant portion of their lives on riverbeds"............ "About half of those nest there"............."Bull and cutthroat trout always spawn their eggs on gravel-bed streams where underground seeps bring fresh oxygen to the egg redds and flush away the waste that might suffocate the embryos"............"GrizzlyBears always are using these floodplains iin the Spring, grazing on the first plant shoots".......... "Wolf den locations always fall within short distances of river bottoms"..................... "So do most of the kill sites where they take down elk"............“When we stabilize a gravel-bed river that should be mobile and dynamic, we’re locking it into place".................. “If we lose the functionality of a gravel-bed river, we drastically lose the(biodiversity) and natural heritage of the region"

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LIKE A SPONGE

Research led by UM underscores importance of gravel-bed rivers to safeguard biodiversity

Rob Chaney; missoukian.com