River’s processes and flow-biota interactions: lessons learned from the experiments by Donatella TERMINI

Global warming leads to an alteration of hydrological cycle, determining more frequent high intensity rainfall events. Alteration of hydrological conditions inevitably leads to river's hydromorphological dynamism, with changes in flow discharge, water level, sediment transport and dispersion processes, affecting the aquatic habitats and biotic communities. As it is known, climate is one of controlling factor of the distribution of plant species and rapid climate change leads to remarkable changes in the distribution and behavior of plants, contributing to modify the ecosystem equilibrium. But, vegetation in rivers exerts an important role both contributing to maintain suitable habitat and controlling soil erosion and reducing risk events. Thus, the analysis of flow-vegetation interaction is important both for analysing river’s morphological changes and for evaluating environmental processes such as sediment transport and mixing of transported quantities and nutrients. On the other hand, it is also important to understand the impact of river’s hydro-morphological dynamism on biotic communities and habitat conditions. In this lecture I will share some peculiar elements on the aforementioned aspects learned from the experiments.