Horses & Burros improve the environment water wise

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SwordfishMining
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Horses & Burros improve the environment water wise

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Feral equids (horses and donkeys) reintroduced to desert regions in the North American southwest regularly dig wells to expose groundwater, increasing water availability — and sometimes providing the only water available locally — for a wide variety of plant and animal species and ecosystem processes, according to new research led by the University of Technology Sydney and Aarhus University.

On the Refuge here they trapped them & fenced them out of the 550 million acres. The deer and antelope & sheep do not neet them grazing for the water they expose.

“Water is the main limiting resource in dryland ecosystems. It determines species composition, food web structure, and vegetation dynamics,” said Dr. Erick Lundgren from the University of Technology Sydney and Aarhus University and his colleagues.
“Yet, the capacity for animals to enhance water availability by exposing subsurface water has received little attention.”
“Wild donkeys (Equus africanus asinus) and horses (Equus ferus caballus), as well as most other equids and all elephant species, regularly dig wells of up to 2 m in depth.”
To evaluate well digging and its associated ecosystem effects, Dr. Lundgren and colleagues surveyed four groundwater-fed streams in the Sonoran Desert every 2 to 4 weeks over three summers.
They observed well-digging by the region’s feral equids (horses and donkeys) and found that the equid-engineered wells increased water availability for a number of native desert species.
“Streams were 7 to 32 km apart and were 300 to 1,800 m long,” they said.
“Like many desert streams, site hydrology was highly variable, as was the relative contribution of equid wells.”
“Equid wells were particularly important to provisioning water in midsummer as temperatures increased and water tables receded.”
“At one fully intermittent stream that lost all background water, equid wells provided 100% of surface water.”
“Even at sites which remained perennial (background water retained at headwater springs), wells provided up to 74% of surface water by accessing the water table in dry reaches.”

“Likewise, equid wells increased water density relative to background water by an average of 332% and by as much as 1,450%.”
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more:
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/well-di ... 09616.html
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