THE IMPACT OF SALMONID SPAWNING ON ZOOBENTHOS:A SIMULATION APPROACH TO EVALUATIONS
Traditional methods for studying the impact of spawning salmonids on bottom communities leadonly to the registration of a post-spawning decline in the quantitative indicators of the zoobenthos of spawning grounds, as a rule. The approach proposed in this paper allows for the range of derivable information to be expanded. Benthic invertebrates, in response to traumatic dislodgments of substrates by salmonids, are shown not only to pass to drifting, but also to migrating deeper into the hyporheic zone. A probabilistic calculation of the losses of some invertebrate populations due to substrate displacements has been carried out.