The word “riparian” comes from the Latin ripa, meaning river bank. Areas of transition between land and water, riparian zones make up a small percentage of the Earth, but their importance to the overall ecosystem is outsized.
Maine’s natural riparian zones are usually forested. They filter runoff, stabilize soils, control flooding, and supply food and habitat for a wide diversity of life, while also providing corridors for wildlife to move about. Fish and aquatic plants depend on the shade of the riparian zone to cool and modulate light in a river. An estimated 85% of all reptiles, birds and mammals in Maine make use of a riparian zone at some point during their life cycle.
That includes humans. Unfortunately, people tend to use riparian zones with reckless abandon and short-terms goals. In Maine, where population growth and the taking of natural resources by Europeans extends back 400 years, people have caused widespread damage to these areas. The hundreds of small dams built on Maine rivers during the nineteenth century are no small part of the problem. Like the Stroudwater Dam, many of them still remain today.
Nature needs riparian zones, but riparian zones also need real rivers. Because the Stroudwater impoundment is no longer a true river, its riparian zone suffers from landform instability, standing erosion, oxygen depletion, weakening of aquatic and terrestrial food webs, and a loss of species diversity. Dam removal and habitat restoration on the Stroudwater River can and will reverse that.
The Space Between:, Taylor, P., Gulf of Maine Times, Fall 2002 (Volume 6, No. 3)
Increased Protection Needed for Maine’s Riparian Zones, Franklin Journal, 2020
Friends of the Stroudwater River 