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Question: Restoration of channelized streams increases geomorphic complexity but it remains unclear how this interacts with processes that drive future vegetation changes (dispersal, germination and establishment). This study asks if increased geomorphic complexity increases recruitment conditions of sown seeds or affects post-dispersal natural seedling densities. Location: Vindel River catchment, northern Sweden. Methods: We selected seven study streams with paired reaches that differed in the degree to which geomorphic complexity was restored. Basic reaches used simple restoration methods while enhanced reaches additionally added large boulders and woody debris. We sowed seeds of six species at ten locations in each reach in 2014 and counted the number of seedlings after 8 wk and the number of naturally occurring seedlings in a plot adjacent to the sowing locations in 2013 and 2014. Using factor analysis based on 34 complexity measurements, overall geomorphic complexity was quantified for eight of the 14 reaches. Results: Total numbers of sown (2014) and natural seedlings (2013 and 2014) summed per reach did not differ between restoration types when tested pair-wise. Enhanced restoration did not always significantly increase geomorphic complexity, which differed considerably between the streams. More complex reaches were steeper, had larger size sediment and more nutrient-poor soils. Total recruitment of sown species significantly decreased with increasing complexity. Numbers of natural seedlings differed considerably from 2013 to 2014, but were not related to complexity. In 2014, a potential parent plant of the same species occurred within the same plot for 71.8% of the natural seedlings that could be identified. Conclusions: The recruitment of sown seeds was affected by overall geomorphic complexity rather than by the enhanced restoration. The absence of a correlation between geomorphic complexity and natural seedlings could indicate that natural seedling dynamics are not solely determined by recruitment conditions, but also by dispersal.

Species occurrences are influenced by numerous factors whose effects may be context dependent. Thus, the magnitude of the effects and their relative importance to species distributions may vary among ecosystems due to anthropogenic stressors. To investigate context dependency in factors governing microbial bioindicators, we developed species distribution models (SDMs) for epilithic stream diatom species in human-impacted and pristine sites separately. We performed SDMs using boosted regression trees for 110 stream diatom species, which were common to both data sets, in 164 human-impacted and 164 pristine sites in Finland (covering similar to 1,000 km, 60 degrees to 68 degrees N). For each species and site group, two sets of models were conducted: climate model, comprising three climatic variables, and full model, comprising the climatic and six local environmental variables. No significant difference in model performance was found between the site groups. However, climatic variables had greater importance compared with local environmental variables in pristine sites, whereas local environmental variables had greater importance in human-impacted sites as hypothesized. Water balance and conductivity were the key variables in human-impacted sites. The relative importance of climatic and local environmental variables varied among individual species, but also between the site groups. We found a clear context dependency among the variables influencing stream diatom distributions as the most important factors varied both among species and between the site groups. In human-impacted streams, species distributions were mainly governed by water chemistry, whereas in pristine streams by climate. We suggest that climatic models may be suitable in pristine ecosystems, whereas the full models comprising both climatic and local environmental variables should be used in human-impacted ecosystems.

Few environmental issues have resulted in such a heated policy-science controversy in Sweden as the 1990s acidification debate in the north of the country. The belief that exceptionally high stream acidity levels during hydrological events was caused by anthropogenic deposition resulted in a governmentally funded, multi-million dollar surface-water liming program. This program was heavily criticized by a large part of the scientific community arguing that the acidity of northern streams was primarily caused by naturally occurring organic acids. Here, we revisit the acid deposition legacy in northern Sweden two decades after the culmination of the controversy by examining the long-term water chemistry trends in the Svartberget/Krycklan research catchment that became a nexus for the Swedish debate. In this reference stream, trends in acidic episodes do show a modest recovery that matches declines in acid deposition to pre-industrial levels, although stream acidity continues to be overwhelmingly driven by organic acidity. Yet there are legacies of acid deposition related to calcium losses from soils, which are more pronounced than anticipated. Finally, assessment of these trends are becoming increasingly complicated by new changes and threats to water resources that must be recognized to avoid unnecessary, expensive, and potentially counterproductive measures to adapt and mitigate human influences. Here we make the argument that while the acidification era is ending, climate change, land-use transitions, and long-range transport of other contaminants warrant close monitoring in the decades to come.