Speaker, Robert W.; Luchessa, Karen J.; Franklin, Jerry F.; Gregory, Stanley V. 1988. The use of plastic strips to measure leaf retention by riparian vegetation in a coastal Oregon stream. The American Midland Naturalist. 120(1): 22-31.
AnsTRAcT: The feasibility of using strips of plastic instead of leaves for estimatingthe rate of retention of coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM; >1 mm in diam)in streams was tested by simultaneously measuring retention of leaves and strips ofplastic cut to approximately the same size as the leaves in six third- and fourth-orderstreams. There was no significant difference in the retention rates between the twomethods when all six study reaches were considered together, nor was there a differ-ence in the location of retention of leaves and strips of plastic within a reach. How-ever, the retention rate of plastic strips was significantly higher than that of leaves inthe two reaches with the highest flows.
Plastic strips were used to assess the importance of shrubby riparian vegetation inretaining CPOM in a third-order stream. The density of streamside shrubs was re-duced to approximately 60% and 0% of naturally occurring levels, and retention wasmeasured by releasing known quantities of plastic strips into the stream. Retentionwas highest in the reaches where shrub densities were not reduced, intermediate inreaches that were thinned, and lowest in reaches where shrubs had been completelyremoved. Riparian vegetation was directly or indirectly responsible for 68% of the re-tention in the cleared reaches, 79% of the retention in the thinned sections and 84%of the retention in the control reaches.