Stephen Philip Rice

Manchester Metropolitan University | MMU · Department of Natural Sciences

Both the amount and spatial arrangement (configurational heterogeneity) of resources can affect population abundance and community diversity via influence on the growth, survival, reproduction, recruitment and movement of species. However, in most cases, it is difficult to separate the effects of resource amount from arrangement because these two a...

River channels, riparian and floodplain forms and dynamics are all influenced strongly by biological processes. However, the influence of macroinvertebrates on entrainment and transport of river sediments remains poorly understood. We use an energy‐based approach to explore the capacity of benthic animals to move surficial, gravel‐bed particles in...

The behavior of animals can change when they become invasive. Whilst many species demonstrate exaggerations of existing behaviors, signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) display a novel burrowing activity in some invaded rivers. Understanding if burrowing is learned or innate is important for modelling the geomorphological effects of invasion i...

Landscapes and ecosystems are the result of two-way interactions between hydro-geomorphic and biological processes. Many animals, particularly those that build structures or transport sediment, are important biogeomorphic agents. Glossosomatidae caddisfly larvae (Insecta, Trichoptera) are globally widespread and abundant inhabitants of gravel-bed r...

River gravel mobility is an important control on river behaviour, morphology, and ecosystem processes. Gravel stability is dependent on abiotic flow and sediment properties, alongside less widely acknowledged biotic processes. The quagga mussel (Dreissena bugensis), a highly invasive bivalve, frequently occurs at high population densities in rivers...

Historically it has been assumed that abiotic forces dominate fluvial sediment dynamics. However, a growing body of work indicates that biological energy can also exert a significant control over sediment dynamics. The role that invasive species may play in altering fine sediment dynamics is particularly pertinent given that any influence may disru...

The importance of two‐way interactions between animals and the physical hydraulic and sedimentological environment are increasingly recognized (e.g., zoogeomorphology). Caddisflies (Trichoptera) are a group of aquatic insects known for their bioconstructions, particularly cases built from fine sediment and silk. Caddisfly cases differ in size, shap...

Invertebrates are the most diverse and abundant organisms on the planet. The importance of invertebrates as sediment engineers has been recognised for many decades. However, research has primarily been concerned with terrestrial, lentic or marine systems. We understand very little about the potential importance of invertebrates to fluvial geomorpho...

Despite acknowledgement of zoogeomorphological impacts and a positive trajectory for biogeomorphology, the cumulative geomorphic significance of animals remains largely unknown across geomorphic scales. We do not know the proportion of erosion, transport and deposition that is mediated by animal activity in different environments and cannot answer...

[Pre-publication Abstract] Measuring the physical complexity of habitats or ecological resources is often achieved using system-specific methods that make comparisons across ecosystems difficult. One measure that is applicable across multiple ecosystems and scales is the fractal dimension, which has the benefit of generality as well as potential sc...

• Seasonal variation in resource availability can have strong effects on life histories and population densities. Emergent rocks (ERs) are an essential oviposition resource for multiple species of stream insects. The availability of ERs depends upon water depth and clast size, which vary with discharge and river geomorphology, respectively. Recruit...

Burrowing into riverbanks by animals transfers sediment directly into river channels and has been hypothesised to accelerate bank erosion and promote mass failure. A field monitoring study on two UK rivers invaded by signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) assessed the impact of burrowing on bank erosion processes. Erosion pins were installed in...

Delta channels are important landforms at the interface of sediment transfer from terrestrial to oceanic realms and affect large, and often vulnerable, human populations. Understanding these dynamics is pressing because delta processes are sensitive to climate change and human activity via adjustments in, for example, mean sea level, and water and...

Amongst oviparous animals, the spatial distribution of individuals is often set initially by where females lay eggs, with potential implications for populations and species coexistence. Do the spatial arrangements of oviposition sites or female behaviours determine spatial patterns of eggs? The consequences of spatial patterns may be context indepe...

Suitable gravel availability is critical for the spawning success of lithophilous fishes, including redd builders. Redd construction during spawning can alter substrate characteristics, thereby influencing hydraulic conditions and sediment transport, highlighting the importance of spawning as a zoogeomorphic activity. Here, interactions between red...

Submerged freshwater macrophytes are frequently used in hydraulic laboratories to study flow–plant interactions and the role of plants in aquatic ecosystems, but environmental conditions in flume facilities are often suboptimal for plants and can cause plant stress. Physiological responses of plants under stress can trigger modifications in plant b...

The complex surface topography of river substrates controls near‐bed hydraulics and drives the exchange of subsurface and surface flow. In rivers, the topographic structures that are studied are usually formed by the flow, but it is known that many animals also create biogenic bedforms, such as pits and mounds. Here, a large‐eddy simulation model o...

Caddisfly (Trichoptera) larvae are an abundant and widespread aquatic insect group characterised by the construction of silk structures, including nets and cases. Case‐building caddisfly have the potential to modify the sorting and mobility of sand and fine gravel via; 1) case construction, resulting in altered sediment properties; 2) transporting...

Many taxa possess a range of strategies to reduce the risk of predation, including actively seeking suitable refuge habitats; however, the global spread of invasive species may disrupt these behavioral responses. In lotic ecosystems, interstitial spaces in the substrate are important refugia for small organisms. Some predators are ecosystem enginee...

Fine sediment availability and channel hydraulics are two of the primary controls on the ingress of fine sediment into gravel river beds. A novel dataset consisting of fine sediment ingress measurements coupled with high-resolution turbidity and discharge time series, was analysed to investigate relations between ingress, discharge and turbidity. D...

Interactions between flow and vegetation are widely investigated because vegetation is a primary factor controlling channel ecohydraulics, nearshore hydraulics and flood risk. Laboratory experiments are a critical tool in this research area and, to adequately represent the complexity of natural ecosystems, live plants, rather than artificial surrog...

The spawning success of lithophilic salmonids is strongly influenced by the fine sediment content (“fines”) of spawning substrates, yet knowledge on the impacts of fines on the spawning of non‐salmonid lithophiles remains limited, despite their ecological and socio‐economic importance in European rivers. Consequently, the aim here was to use an ex‐...

There is growing recognition that manipulation of sediments by animals can have significant consequences for river geomorphology and ecosystem functioning, but the biogeomorphic effects of aquatic invertebrates remain poorly understood. Caddisfly (Trichoptera) are a widespread, abundant and diverse group of aquatic insects, many of which construct...

The interactions between water, sediment and biology in fluvial systems are complex and driven by multiple forcing mechanisms across a range of spatial and temporal scales. In a changing climate, some meteorological drivers are expected to become more extreme with, for example, more prolonged droughts or more frequent flooding. Such environmental c...

Invasive signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) are considered to be the most prevalent non-native crayfish species in Europe. Where large populations become established they have significant and long-term effects on benthic macroinvertebrate communities. However, much less is known about how community effects associated with crayfish invasion...

Deposition of fine sediment that fills interstitial spaces in streambed substrates is widely acknowledged to have significant negative effects on macroinvertebrate communities, but the temporal consistency of clogging effects is less well known. In this study the effects of experimentally enhanced fine sediment content on aquatic invertebrates were...

Excess fine sediment is a global cause of lotic ecosystem degradation. Despite historic interest in identifying sediment sources and quantifying instream dynamics, tackling fine sediment problems remains a key challenge for river managers and a continued focus of international research. Accordingly, a national meeting of the British Hydrological So...

Flume studies have demonstrated that foraging by fish can modify the structure and topography of gravel substrates, thereby increasing particle entrainment probabilities and the amount of sediment mobilized during subsequent experimental high flows. However, the zoogeomorphic impact of benthic foraging has not previously been investigated in the fi...

Fine sediments can impact river biota, with egg and larval stages of lithophilic fish particularly sensitive to deposition of sand- to clay-sized particles (‘fines’) in spawning gravels. Mitigation and restoration methods include jetting to cleanse gravels of fines. Despite wide application, impacts of jetting on gravel composition and quality have...

The permeability of river beds is an important control on hyporheic flow and the movement of fine sediment and solutes into and out of the bed. However, relatively little is known about the effect of bed permeability on overlying near-bed flow dynamics, and thus on fluid advection at the sediment-water interface. This study provides the first quant...

Despite increasing recognition that animals play important roles in geomorphological systems (zoogeomorphol-ogy), with important ecological implications for the animals and their ecosystems (ecosystem engineering), sediment transport continues to be regarded as an abiotic process. This research challenges that orthodoxy by investigating the biotic...

Despite increasing recognition that animals play important roles in geomorphological systems (zoogeomorphol-ogy), with important ecological implications for the animals and their ecosystems (ecosystem engineering), sediment transport continues to be regarded as an abiotic process. This research challenges that orthodoxy by investigating the biotic...

Sound water policy and management rests on sound hydrometeorological and ecological data. Conversely, unrepresentative, poorly collected, or erroneously archived data introduce uncertainty regarding the magnitude, rate, and direction of environmental change, in addition to undermining confidence in decision‐making processes. Unfortunately, data bia...

Differences in the structure of mobile armors formed at three different flow strengths have been investigated in a laboratory flume. The temporal evolution of the bed surfaces and the properties of the final beds were compared using metrics of surface grain size, microtopography, and bed organization at both grain and mesoscales. Measurements of th...

Non-native species represent a significant threat to indigenous biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide. It is widely acknowledged that invasive crayfish species may be instrumental in modifying benthic invertebrate community structure, but there is limited knowledge regarding the temporal and spatial extent of these effects within lotic e...

Many species of fish are benthivorous – they forage for food in the river bed – and their foraging disturbs, dis- places and sorts bed materials with implications for fluvial sediment transport. Flume experiments have confirmed that benthic foraging by Barbel (Barbus barbus (L.)) and Chub (Squalius cephalus (L.)) modifies the structure and topograp...

Sediment transport is regarded as an abiotic process driven by geophysical energy, but zoogeomorphological activity indicates that biological energy can also fuel sediment movements. It is therefore prudent to measure the contribution that biota make to sediment transport, but comparisons of abiotic and biotic sediment flux are rare. For a stream i...

In fluvial networks, some confluences are associated with tributary-driven aggradation where coarse sediment is stored, downstream sediment connectivity is interrupted and substantial hydraulic and morphological heterogeneity is generated. To the extent that biological diversity is supported by physical diversity, it has been proposed that the dist...

Benthic foraging by fish can modify the nature and rates of fine sediment accrual and the structure and topography of coarse-grained fluvial substrates, with the potential to alter bed material characteristics, particle entrainment thresholds, and bedload transport fluxes. However, knowledge of what controls the nature, extent, and intensity of ben...

The role of biotic forcing in fluvial geomorphology is understudied. This paper investigates the suggestion that the activities of signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) can increase suspended sediment fluxes in rivers. Previous field work, supported by mesocosm experiments, suggests that crayfish nocturnalism can cause night time increases in...

Physical modelling is a key tool for generating understanding of the complex interactions between aquatic organisms and hydraulics, which is important for management of aquatic environments under environmental change and our ability to exploit ecosystem services. Many aspects of this field remain poorly understood and the use of physical models wit...

Animals make decisions based on the sensory information that they obtain from the environment and other organisms within that environment. In a river, this information is transported, transmitted, masked, and filtered by fluvial factors and processes, such as relative roughness and turbulent flow. By interpreting the resultant signals, animals deci...

The plants and animals that inhabit river channels may act as zoogeomorphic agents affecting the nature and rates of sediment recruitment, transport and deposition. The impact of benthic-feeding fish, which disturb bed material sediments during their search for food, has received very little attention, even though benthic feeding species are widesp...

Invertebrate animals have an important and complex role in altering the physical and biochemical environment of marine and freshwater sediments. A database has been compiled which aims to include all published articles that consider how macroinvertebrates alter aquatic systems. The database contains 2300 entries spanning over 120 years of study and...

The traps of many carnivorous plants are red in colour. This has been widely hypothesized to serve a prey attraction function; colour has also been hypothesized to function as camouflage, preventing prey avoidance. We tested these two hypotheses in situ for the carnivorous plant Drosera rotundifolia. We conducted three separate studies: (i) prey at...

Signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) are an invasive species of global significance because of their detrimental impacts on freshwater environments and native organisms. The movement of signal crayfish was continuously monitored for 150-days through a 20-m reach of an alluvial stream in the UK. Passive integrated transponder-tags were attache...

Flow within the interfacial layer of gravel‐bed rivers is poorly understood, but this zone is important because the hydraulics here transport sediment, generate flow structures and interact with benthic organisms. We hypothesized that different gravel‐bed microtopographies generate measurable differences in hydraulic characteristics within the inte...

Technologies on their own will not alter the fundamental fact that learning a discipline such as medicine will always require considerable effort on the part of students and teachers. However, there is evidence that technology can enhance teaching and learning, when used thoughtfully and appropriately. This chapter outlines such approaches based on...

Geomorphic processes are important agents of ecosystem distur-bance, and ecosystem functions moderate the magnitude and frequen-cy of geomorphic events. Developing an improved understanding of the interactions between geomorphic and ecological processes represents a key challenge for both disciplines, as is exemplified by the large number of specia...

Momentum exchange between a rough, porous gravel substrate and the overlying turbulent flow is a key control of fine sediment ingress, pollutant exchange, spawning success and hyporheic flows. The surface topography and porosity of the substrate are known to be important controls on the near-bed hydraulics and momentum transfer mechanisms. However,...

Quantifying the structure of river beds is important for many aspects of fluvial geomorphology, including understanding small scale sediment transport/entrainment processes and the functionality of aquatic habitats. Close range photogrammetry can be used to obtain high resolution representations of the river bed structure. However, previous work ha...

The signal crayfish (Pacifasticus leniusculus) is a formidable invasive species that has had a deleterious impact on native freshwater fauna across Europe. We contend that the impact of this animal extends beyond ecology into geomorphology and hypothesise that crayfish are significant agents of fine sediment recruitment and mobilisation, with poten...

Geomorphological processes are an integral part of ecosystem functioning and ecosystem functioning affects geomorphological processes. Increasingly widespread acknowledgement of this simple idea is manifest in a vigorous research community engaged with questions that address the two-way interaction between biota and geomorphology, at a range of sca...

Information about the grain-size distribution of the surface layer of sediment exposed on riverbeds is often critical in studies of fluvial hydraulics, geomorphology, and ecology. A variety of sampling and analysis techniques are in common usage that produce grain-size distributions that are not directly comparable. This paper seeks to explore the...

In gravel-bed rivers, between bed-mobilising flood events, surface sediment particles are rearranged by moderate flows, generally into more stable “water-worked” positions characterised by structures of various types, including imbrication and pebble clusters. This surface layer of structured, relatively coarse particles moderates the availability...

In gravel-bed rivers, between bed-mobilising flood events, surface sediment particles are rearranged by moderate flows, generally into more stable "water-worked" positions characterised by structures of various types, including imbrication and pebble clusters. This surface layer of structured, relatively coarse particles moderates the availability...

The impact on sediment transport processes and channel morphology of several relatively large, iconic animals including beaver and salmon is increasingly well understood. However, many other aquatic fauna are important zoogeomorphic agents and ecosystem engineers. These somewhat overlooked "Cinderella" species include benthic aquatic insect larvae,...

Deeper consideration of the meaning and relevance of habitat is necessary and inevitable as interdisciplinary river science reveals the interactive nature of the relation between fluvial environments and the organisms that live in them. Following some embellishment of Lapointe's critique of ‘habitat’ we illustrate this interaction by reviewing the...

Rivers are active agents of erosion and deposition, and the movement of sediment represents a logistic and sometimes strategic nuisance that affects road and rail communications, channel stability and river ecosystems. The processes of sediment transport are, however, still unclear to the extent that sediment transport rates are often greatly under...

There is growing acknowledgement of the interaction between animals and the river bed on which they live and the implications of biological activity for geomorphic processes. It has been observed that signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) disturb gravel substrates, potentially promoting sediment transport and impacting ecological communities....

Sediment quantity and quality are key considerations in the sustainable management of fluvial systems. Increasing attention is being paid to the role of aquatic biota as geomorphic agents, capable of altering the composition, mobilization and transport of fluvial sediments at various spatiotemporal scales. In this paper invasive species are present...

Recent studies have shown subglacial drainage system configuration to be a key control on sediment transport pathways. This is especially important in the case of suspended sediment fluxes, as these require very little energy to transport once entrained. Analysis of such fluxes is therefore likely to reflect sediment source characteristics and the...

River water temperature (Tw) is an important control of the functioning of freshwater ecosystems. Anthropogenic climate change is expected to increase Tw over coming decades, with implications for the vitality and composition of plant and animal communities. It has been suggested that planting riparian woodlands along river corridors could provide...

The impact of signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) on the topography and fabric of six narrowly graded, gravel substrates was investigated using repeat laser scanning of sediment surfaces in still-water aquaria. Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of the gravel surfaces were obtained before and after exposure to crayfish for five predetermined pe...

A national meeting of the British Hydrological Society held at Loughborough University (UK) focused on process interactions between lotic organisms, flow and sediment at scales relevant to organisms. The meeting sought to address how it is possible to scale up results of small (organism) scale research at the interface of ecology, geomorphology and...

The reworking of substrates by organisms, termed bioturbation, is considered a fundamental processes in marine and terrestrial environments but has remained relatively unstudied in fluvial environments. This studies looks at the bioturbation of fluvial gravel substrates by signal crayfish, an internationally important invasive species. We investiga...

Recent years have seen increased interest in automated methods, utilizing photographs collected with a handheld digital camera, for determining the grain size distribution of coarse river sediments. Such methods are as precise as traditional field methods and have considerable time and cost advantages. Nevertheless, several unresolved issues pertai...

This paper was published online in 2010 as part of U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2010-5091. Achieving a significant advance in understanding the sedimentary dynamics of rivers, especially those with coarse-grained beds, depends upon the acquisition of data that adequately reflect sediment flux. In a similar vein, the succe...

One ‘2020 vision’ for fluvial geomorphology is that it sits alongside stream ecology and hydraulic engineering as a key element of an integrated, interdisciplinary river science. A challenge to this vision is that scientists from these three communities may approach problems from different perspectives with different questions and have different me...

1. The hydraulic and geomorphic characteristics of stream patches are often associated with distinctive assemblages or densities of stream invertebrates, and it is routinely presumed that these patterns reflect primarily species‐specific habitat requirements. An alternative hypothesis is that such patterns may be influenced by constraints on moveme...

Turbulent flow structures are often identified as a cause for the episodic and pulsating nature of bedload transport at short time scales. Several studies have shown that sediment transport rates and/or individual particle motion may be triggered by turbulent flow structures such as sweeps. In order to simplify the turbulence properties or to achie...

Fluvial habitats can be described from a series of physical variables but to adequately address the habitat quality it becomes necessary to develop an understanding that combines the physical variables with the behaviour of the inhabitating organisms. The hypothesis of flow refugia provide a rational that can explain the pe