Kasangaki, AventinoBalirwa, JohnChapman, Lauren J.2022-12-092022-12-092008Kasangaki, A., Chapman, L. J., & Balirwa, J. (2008). Land use and the ecology of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages of high‐altitude rainforest streams in Uganda. Freshwater biology, 53(4), 681-697.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2007.01925.xhttps://nru.uncst.go.ug/handle/123456789/6100In sub-Saharan Africa, tropical forests are increasingly threatened by accelerating rates of forest conversion and degradation. In East Africa, the larger tracts of intact rainforest lie largely in protected areas surrounded by converted landscape. Thus, there is critical need to understand the functional links between large-scale land use and changes in river conditions, and the implications of park boundaries on catchment integrity. The objective of this study was to use the mosaic of heavily converted land and pristine forest created by the protection of the high-altitude rainforest in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda to explore effects of deforestation on aquatic systems and the value of forest in buffering effects of adjacent land conversion. A set of 16 sites was selected over four drainages to include four categories of deforestation: agricultural land, deforested upstream (of the park boundary), forest edge (park boundary) and forest. We predicted that forest buffer (downstream or on the edge) would moderate effects of deforestation. To address this prediction, we quantified relationships between disturbance level and both physicochemical characters and traits of the macroinvertebrate assemblages during six sampling periods (February 2003 and June 2004). Results of both principal components analysis and cluster analyses indicated differences in limnological variables among deforestation categories. PC1 described a gradient from deforested sites with poor water quality to pristine forested sites with relatively good water quality. Agricultural sites and deforested upstream sites generally had the highest turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), and conductivity values and low transparency values. Forest sites and boundary site groups generally exhibited low turbidity, TDS, and conductivity values and high water transparency values. Sites also clustered according to deforestation categories; forest and forested edge sites formed a cluster independent of both agricultural land and deforested-upstream.ensub-Saharan Africatropical forestsforest conversionArticle