Large Wood

The recruitment and role of instream and floodplain large wood following landscape disturbance.

recruitment of large wood into streams following disturbance

Large wood and organic material can influence the movement of water, sediment and nutrients through the landscape and can provide habitat for a range of species. Disturbances such as floods, fires, wind storms, and avalanches have the potential to bring large volumes of wood and carbon into the river corridor. 

Along with a suite of collaborators, I am interested in understanding the volume and impact of wood recruited during and following disturbances and how large wood additions can make the river corridor more resilient to future disturbances.  

Large wood jam trapped on live trees in a river floodplain.

Floods

Large wood accumulates in unconfined, forested river corridors during overbank flooding, and can persist for decades. 

Photo: West Creek, Colorado following the 2013 Front Range Flood. 


Fallen trees in a river channel.

Wind storms

Wind storms can cause widespread forest blowdown that delivers significant volumes of large wood to headwater streams. 

Photo: Lerdederg River, Victoria, Australia following a 2021 storm.

Large wood deposited in a river channel in front of a barren avalanche pathway.

Avalanches

Snow avalanches in montane watersheds provide substantial inputs of large wood and influence watershed-scale heterogeneity.

Photo: South Fork Frying Pan River, Colorado following a 2019 Avalanche. 

Movement of Large Wood

Although stable wood and organic material accumulations can provide many benefits in situ, the movement of wood throughout a catchment or watershed can deliver additional ecosystem functions. 

I am interested in further understanding wood mobility following recruitment and tracking the changing functions of mobile wood. 

Photo: Conceptual diagram by J. Scamardo from Wohl et al. (2023, River Research and Applications). 

Read about it: 

Kemper, J.T. and Scamardo, J. 2023. Snow avalanches as a driver of large wood dynamics in mountain streams. Geophysical Research Letters 50. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL106355 

Wohl, E., Uno, H., Dunn, S.B., Kemper, J.T., Marshall, A., Means-Brous, M., Scamardo, J., and Triantafillou, S. 2023. Why wood should move in rivers. River Research and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.4114 

Scamardo, J., Nelson, P.A., Nichols, M., and Wohl, E. 2022. Modeling the relative morphodynamic influence of vegetation and large wood in a dryland ephemeral stream, Arizona, USA. Geomorphology 417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2022.108444 

Wohl, E., and Scamardo, J. 2022. Patterns of organic matter accumulation in dryland river corridors of the southwestern United States. Science of the Total Environment 833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155136 

Wohl, E., Marshall, A.E., Scamardo, J., White, D., and Morrison, R. 2022. Biogeomorphic influences on river corridor resilience to wildfire disturbances in a mountain stream of the Southern Rockies, USA. Science of the Total Environment 820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153321 

Lininger, K.B., Scamardo, J., and Guiney, M. 2021. Floodplain large wood and organic matter jam formation after a large flood: Investigating the influence of floodplain forest stand characteristics and river corridor morphology. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 126. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JF006011 

Wohl, E. and Scamardo, J. 2021. The resilience of logjams to floods. Hydrological Processes 35. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13970 

Wohl, E., Hinshaw, S., Scamardo, J., and Gutierrez-Fonseca, P. 2019. Transient organic jams in Puerto Rican mountain streams after hurricanes. River Research and Applications 35. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3405