Abstract
Perceived growth in the adventure recreation sport of canyoning in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (Australia) has raised concerns with park management that such activity is resulting in unsustainable visitor impacts to canyon ecosystems. Three levels of trampling intensity were applied within an upland section of a canyon stream to assess the impact of trampling on benthic macroinvertebrate communities. After an initial detrimental effect from trampling, there was a rapid recovery of the macroinvertebrate community. Recovery occurred within one day of trampling ceasing, and overall community composition was similar among treatments after 15 days. However, by day 15 the untrampled sites showed a substantial decrease in animal abundance. This indicated that adjacent habitat contributed greatly to the recolonisation of animals into trampled areas.
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Acknowledgments
This study was undertaken as part of the Ph.D. research of the senior author and was funded by a Ph.D. Scholarship, University of Western Sydney. We also acknowledge Dorine van Kampen for her help in transporting equipment and setting up the experiment, and John and Ina Bennett, and Alison Hillman for help in sampling. Finally we acknowledge the very detailed and thoughtful reviews of two anonymous reviewers that helped us to greatly improve our paper.
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Hardiman, N., Burgin, S. Effects of trampling on in-stream macroinvertebrate communities from canyoning activity in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Wetlands Ecol Manage 19, 61–71 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-010-9200-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-010-9200-4