Dam busy: beavers and their influence on the structure and function of river corridor hydrology, geomorphology, biogeochemistry and ecosystems

Beavers (castor fiber, castor canadensis) are the most influential mammalian ecosystem engineer, heavily modifying river corridors and influencing hydrology, geomorphology, nutrient cycling, and ecology. As an agent of disturbance, they achieve this first and foremost through dam construction, which impounds flow and increases the extent of open water, and from which all other landscape and ecosystem impacts follow. Following a long period of local and regional eradication, beaver populations have been recovering and expanding throughout Europe and North America, as well as an introduced species in South America, prompting a need to comprehensively review the current state of knowledge on how beavers influence the structure and function of river corridors. Here, we synthesize the overall impacts on hydrology, geomorphology, biogeochemistry, and aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Our key findings are that a complex of beaver dams can increase surface and subsurface water storage, modify the reach scale partitioning of water budgets, allow site specific flood attenuation, alter low flow hydrology, increase evaporation, increase water and nutrient residence times, increase geomorphic heterogeneity, delay sediment transport, increase carbon, nutrient and sediment storage, expand the extent of anaerobic conditions and interfaces, increase the downstream export of dissolved organic carbon and ammonium, decrease the downstream export of nitrate, increase lotic to lentic habitat transitions and aquatic primary production, induce ‘reverse’ succession in riparian vegetation assemblages, and increase biodiversity on reach scales. We then examine the key feedbacks and overlaps between these changes induced by beavers, where the decrease in longitudinal hydrologic connectivity create ponds and wetlands, transitions between lentic to lotic ecosystems, increase vertical hydraulic exchange gradients, and biogeochemical cycling per unit stream length, while increased lateral connectivity will determine the extent of open water area and wetland and littoral zone habitats, and induce ‘reverse’ succession in riparian vegetation assemblages. However, the extent of these impacts depends firstly on the hydro-geomorphic landscape context, with the extent of floodplain inundation being a key driver of changes to hydrologic, geomorphic, biogeochemical, and ecosystem dynamics. Secondly, it depends on the length of time beavers can sustain disturbance at a given site, which is constrained by top down and bottom up feedbacks, and ultimately determines the pathways of river corridor landscape and ecosystem succession following beaver abandonment. This large influence of beavers on river corridor processes and feedbacks is also fundamentally distinct from what occurs in their absence. Current river management and restoration practices therefore need some level of re-examination to account for the impact of beavers, both positive and negative, such that they can potentially accommodate and enhance the ecosystem engineering services provided by beavers. It is hoped that our synthesis and holistic framework for evaluating beaver impacts can be used in this endevour by river scientists and managers into the future as beaver populations continue to expand in numbers and range.