"Headwater streams" refers to small streams that are at the beginning or source of a river. They are usually located in high elevations and are important because they provide clean water and support diverse ecosystems.
Full definition
Burial
of headwater streams causes loss of ecosystems that are important for nutrient cycling and production of organic matter for downstream food webs [144].
«As remaining habitat for trout becomes more fragmented, only small refuges
in headwater streams at the highest levels will remain,» says biologist Patricia Flebbe of USFS's Virginia - based Southern Research Station.
Management of non-point source pollution is of great importance in the context of coffee agriculture, as this land use often coincides
with headwater streams that influence water quality at the basin scale.
Burial of
headwater streams causes loss of ecosystems that are important for nutrient cycling and production of organic matter for downstream food webs [144].
Our goal is to «rehydrate the landscape» by increasing the amount of rainfall that is absorbed into the ground to recharge water supplies and
feed headwater streams.»
«The great irony is that the
cold headwater streams that were believed to be most vulnerable to climate change appear to be the least vulnerable.
Small headwater streams, small wetlands, and ephemeral water bodies would get greater protection under a proposed rule unveiled today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps).
Based on that up - to - date scientific understanding of the permanent harm that would result from the destruction and burial of six miles of
vital headwater streams, the downstream contamination and resulting ecological damage, and the leveling of 2,000 acres of natural mountaintop, EPA issued a final veto determination in January 2011.
Today, more than 1,000 miles of
Appalachian headwater streams have been completely buried and 300,000 acres of the world's most diverse temperate hardwood forests have been obliterated by so - called «valley fill.»
This new study is unique as it describes current trends rather than relying on future model projections and addresses a broad scope of aquatic biodiversity
in headwater streams (e.g., amphibians, sculpin and trout).
Rubble and overburden from the site will be pushed in to nearby valleys, termed «valley fills,» where they will mix
with headwater streams that go out across the eastern United States.
Check out how mountaintop removal coal mining has destroyed over one - half million acres of forest habitat, AND has buried over 2,000 miles
of headwater streams.
The Upper Mud River flows through sparsely populated areas of southern West Virginia as
a headwater stream.
«
These headwater streams, coming off the mountains and into the lowland, are like the water line to your house peppered with holes, half of the water disappearing into the ground and recharging your neighbor's house well instead of it all reaching your kitchen faucet,» said Liljedahl.
«The sediment can have a wide range of effects on a lot of watersheds, many of which are
headwater streams and important for water supply in the West.»
Headwater streams, which provide the coldest available habitat in many areas, are often assumed to be the ultimate refuges for coldwater species, but many of these species are also acid - sensitive — and many headwaters of the southern Appalachian region are already too acid to support them.
In these forests the combined effect of acidification in
headwater streams and stream warming will restrict acid - sensitive coldwater species such as brook trout to a narrowing band of mid-level stream reaches, increasing the likelihood that these species will disappear locally and possibly regionally.
Current research includes studies of the food web structure and biogeochemistry of Arctic streams and rivers, nitrogen cycling in
headwater streams and estuaries, and the impacts of climate change on the freshwater cycle of the Arctic.
Yet mine - related contaminants persist in streams well below valley fills, forests are destroyed,
headwater streams are lost, and biodiversity is reduced; all of these demonstrate that MTM / VF causes significant environmental damage despite regulatory requirements to minimize impacts.
The Clean Water Protection Act is a bill in the US House of Representatives which will sharply reduce mountaintop removal coal mining by protecting
our headwater streams, where our rivers, like the Mississippi and the Ohio, are born.
It stops up
headwater streams, literally the wellspring for the forest ecosystem and the point of origin for entire watersheds.
Mountaintop - removal coal mining has destroyed 500 mountains, buried thousands of miles of
headwater streams, and wiped thousands of Appalachian communities off the map.
The fill buries
the headwater streams and serves as a toxic sieve of ground - up rock and dirt that will leech heavy metals into the ground water.
These «valley fills» have buried more than 2,000 miles of
headwater streams and polluted many more.