HomeEarthSecondary forests are restoring fresh water in streams

Secondary forests are restoring fresh water in streams

A new research paper has been published by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute which provided us with details of bacterial communities in streams are getting contiguous to young secondary forests which are recovering to resemble the mature forest streams after the cattle has been removed from the land. But the news is these communities are getting robust throughout the year.

2021 has been marked as a critical year, as the Ecosystem Restoration of United Nations Decade has aimed to prevent and reverse the degradation of the world’s ecosystems.

The name of the project is Agua Salud Project which has been collaborated with Panama Canal Authority. This project is an initiative and the aim of this project was to understand the drivers and main consequences of environmental changes.

There has been researches before about forest ecosystems across different lands and Agua Salud project have used the data done by these researches. The new project has informed us about our ability to restore and maintain tropical forests. The Agua Salud project has also offered a unique platform for hydrological studies too as various streams and rivers is there in tropical forests distributed throughout hundreds of hectares.

The residents of these tropical forests rely on streams for food and livelihood. Though microbes are not at all appreciated constituents of aquatic systems, but engineers have ensured that water quality depends on these nutrients.

But the fact is, when streams get polluted or the landscapes surrounding the streams have degraded, microbial communities start to shift. Though by shifting these microbial communities risks their ability to maintain natural processes and that mostly allows harmful bacteria to flourish.

Researchers took weekly samples from streams that is surrounded by mature forest and young secondary forest for over a two-year period. From these samples, they have measured the different conditions of water quality. They have tested filtered water samples to extract and sequence the bacterial DNA in the streams.

The scientists have found similar communities in streams that are surrounded by young secondary and mature forests. But the communities became different and less diverse in the cattle pasture stream. Though the bacterial community in the silvopasture stream shifts seasonally.

In Silvopasture systems, trees are planted on traditional cattle pastures have acquired a lot of attention in recent times. Though there are still some doubts if the system will be able to provide all the environmental benefits that is claimed by the scientists. But it has been clear that having a forest buffer around the stream is supremely beneficial to preserve the water quality and stream water bacterial communities.

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