Watershed controls on the export of large wood from stream corridors

Large wood maintains in-channel and floodplain habitats by influencing the biophysical character of the river corridor. Large wood dynamics in a river corridor are a product of watershed wide processes and also of local recruitment, transport, and storage. This complexity of scales added to the logistical constraints in taking measurements limits our understanding of large wood dynamics through the watershed. To begin to unravel this issue, we compiled a data set of the volume of large wood deposited annually into 131 reservoirs across Japan and compared large wood export to flow discharge and watershed characteristics (watershed size, latitude, channel slope, percent forest, and forest type). We found that large wood was predominately transported during peak flow events. Large wood export increased logarithmically with watershed area. The decreasing export rate of large wood per watershed area is interpreted as a combination of annual export variability in upper watersheds, a non-significant increase in large wood recruitment along the longitudinal gradient (potentially human influenced), the increase in long-term storage on adjacent large floodplains, and significant decay/fragmentation downstream. Watersheds