Low connectivity of riparian vegetation communities
There are no statistically significant trends in richness of vascular riparian plants with downstream distance in Hjuksån with all the reaches combined or for each process domain separately. In Bjurbäcken, there was a significant relationship between richness and distance downstream for all reaches combined (p= 0.003, R2= 0.43) with a slope indicating two new species per kilometer; however, there are no significant relationships for each process domain, separately. However, to control for the large difference in area between the different reaches we focus our results on species density. We found an increase in cumulative species richness (Figure 4) but a negative relationship between species density of vascular riparian plants with downstream distance in Hjuksån with all the reaches combined (R2= 0.21, p = 0.0471, mean = 0.05) (Figure 4a-b); however, there are no significant relationships in Bjurbäcken or for each process domain separately in Hjuksån (Bjurbäcken: R2= 0.009, p = 0.694, mean = 0.06). In examining relationships of reach similarity (in terms of riparian vegetation species composition) by distance between reaches, a few relationships can be found. There are significant relationships when all process domains are combined for both Hjuksån (p = 0.003 R2 = 0.05) and Bjurbäcken (p > 0.001, R2 = 0.09) (Figure 4 c-d). There is also a significant relationship between riparian vegetation similarity and distance between reaches for lakes in Hjuksån (p = 0.002, R2 = 0.176) and for rapids in Bjurbäcken (p <0.001, R2 = 0.226) (Table 2).