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Biological impacts of local vs. regional land use on a small tributary of the Seine River (France): insights from a food web approach based on stable isotopes

  • Spatial and temporal patterns of anthropogenic influence in a large river basin. A multidisciplinary approach
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Abstract

As part of the landscape, streams are influenced by land use. Here, we contributed to the understanding of the biological impacts of land use on streams, investigating how landscape effects vary with spatial scales (local vs. regional). We adopted a food web approach integrating both biological structure and functioning, to focus on the overall effect of land use on stream biocœnosis. We selected 17 sites of a small tributary of the Seine River (France) for their contrasted land use, and conducted a natural experiment by sampling three organic matter sources, three macroinvertebrate taxa, and most of the fish community. Using stable isotope analysis, we calculated three food web metrics evaluating two major dimensions of the trophic diversity displayed by the fish community: (i) the diversity of exploited resources and (ii) the trophic level richness. The idea was to examine whether (1) land-use effects varied according to spatial scales, (2) land use affected food webs through an effect on community structure and (3) land use affected food webs through an effect on available resources. Beside an increase in trophic diversity from upstream to downstream, our empirical data showed that food webs were influenced by land use in the riparian corridors (local scale). The effect was complex, and depended on site’s position along the upstream-downstream gradient. By contrast, land use in the catchment (regional scale) did not influence stream biocœnosis. At the local scale, community structure was weakly influenced by land use, and thus played a minor role in explaining food web modifications. Our results suggested that the amount of available resources at the base of the food web was partly responsible for food web modifications. In addition, changes in biological functioning (i.e. feeding interactions) can also explain another part of the land-use effect. These results highlight the role played by the riparian corridors as a buffer zone, and advocate that riparian corridor should be at the centre of water management attention.

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Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is expressed to the HEF team (part of the Hydrosystems and Bioprocesses Research Unit at Irstea, Antony) for assistance in the field and sample preparation. We thank Adrien Rey and the regional natural park “Parc Naturel Régional de la haute vallée de Chevreuse” for advice and participation to field work. Michel Hénin, head of the RGIS department at the “Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme d’île-de-France”, kindly provided the land cover data. This work was partly funded by the Interdisciplinary Research Program on the Seine River Environment (PIREN-Seine—http://www.sisyphe.upmc.fr/piren/) and by the project 33 of the framework agreement between Irstea and the French National Agency for Water and Aquatic Environments (ONEMA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Irstea, UR HBAN, 1 rue Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, CS 10030, F-92761, Antony, France

    Nicolas Hette-Tronquart, Evelyne Tales, Amandine Zahm & Jérôme Belliard

  2. UMR 5174 EDB (Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique), CNRS, IRD, UPS, ENFA, Université Paul Sabatier, F-31062, Toulouse, France

    Thierry Oberdorff

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  1. Nicolas Hette-Tronquart
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  2. Thierry Oberdorff
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  3. Evelyne Tales
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Correspondence to Nicolas Hette-Tronquart.

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Hette-Tronquart, N., Oberdorff, T., Tales, E. et al. Biological impacts of local vs. regional land use on a small tributary of the Seine River (France): insights from a food web approach based on stable isotopes. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 23583–23594 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-8771-5

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