Addressing Tuolumne River pulse flow impacts on macroinvertebrate community composition

Abstract: The Tuolumne river watershed is a highly managed aquatic system with a variety of anthropogenic alterations that in locations severely limit the continuity of habitat types and create an unnatural daily pulse flow regime. In the early summer of 2014 from June 14th – 23rd, we sampled portions of the Tuolumne river watershed for benthic macroinvertebrates and their microhabitat conditions with the goal of understanding the effects of flow management practices on the benthic macroinvertebrate community composition. We found that the main stem Tuolumne had the lowest diversity when compared to the other sampling sites. Differences in diversity may be due to the impacts of daily pulse flows in some river sections as well as fundamental differences in habitat structure from localized variables