Table 1.
Main characteristics of the studied streams.
Land covered data obtained from the Land Use 2010 map by the Canada Government (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/).
Table 2.
Environmental characteristics of the study reaches.
F stands for forest, A for agricultural, O for Open, C for Closed. Canopy cover values are point values measured at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. The rest of the values are mean ± SD of 5 measurements during the experiment. DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen) is the sum of nitrate-, nitrite- and ammonium-nitrogen. SRP, soluble reactive phosphorus. Discharge was only measured in one site per stream, where it was most convenient, not necessarily in any of the sampling reaches.
Fig 1.
Chlorophyll a per pair of biofilm carriers.
Black columns, closed reaches, white columns, open reaches of agricultural (A) and forest (F) streams. Values are arithmetic means, error bars show standard deviation. Note logarithmic scale.
Fig 2.
Phosphate uptake by biofilm carriers.
Black columns, closed reaches, white columns, open reaches of agricultural (A) and forest (F) streams. Left panel, phosphate uptake by pair of biofilm carriers. Right panel, phosphate uptake by unit chlorophyll. Values are arithmetic means, error bars show standard deviation.
Fig 3.
Temperature-corrected breakdown rates.
Black columns, closed reaches, white columns, open reaches of agricultural (A) and forest (F) streams. Left panel, fine-mesh bags show microbial decomposition. Right panel, coarse-mesh bags show total decomposition. Values are arithmetic means, error bars show standard deviation. Note the different scale of Y axes.
Fig 4.
Fragmentation rate of leaves in bags.
Black columns, closed reaches, white columns, open reaches of agricultural (A) and forest (F) streams. Values are arithmetic means, error bars show standard deviation.