Riparian management affects instream habitat condition in a dairy stream catchment

Using a space-for-time substitution design, we investigated the response of structural instream habitat and fish populations to different riparian management practices throughout a Dairy Best Practice Catchment. We found a significant negative correlation between the upstream area of stock exclusion fencing and deposited instream fine sediment cover. Furthermore, we determined that this relationship emerges when 300m lengths of upstream riparian area were included in the analysis, indicating the scale at which stock exclusion fencing results in a positive instream habitat response. Specifically, for this historically degraded spring-fed stream, our findings indicate that riparian segments with 5 m wide stock exclusion fences (both banks) are required to achieve instream fine sediment cover below 20% in downstream reaches. Fish were sparse and evenly spread throughout the catchment. Fish distributions were not correlated with reach-scale riparian or instream habitat variables, possibly because the available habitat quality gradient was too narrow.