Removing rocks from the stream bed or stream edge to stack or throw can be aesthetically pleasing, but very damaging to the habitat you remove them from in both the short and long term. In the short term you are altering water currents, potentially speeding up certain areas and slowing down others which not only displaces wildlife in both of those areas, but may result in neither being suitable for habitation. It also creates a cascading effect in water flow, causing sediment to settle in areas of what is now slow flow and increasing erosion in areas of high speed flow. This disturbs the physical environment of the waterway, as well as its chemical (nutrient), chronological (change over time) development, and oxygenation.
In the long term, moving rocks brings about another issue, which is erosion. All waterways are shaped by erosion, and a rule in geology is the bigger the rock, the more force it takes to move. This rule is universal from boulders all the way down to individual clay particles. Your ability as a person to lift an even moderately sized rock has a monumental impact on the dynamics of the waterway. In some areas, a rock that may fit in just the palm of your hand might only be able to be moved by a once in a generation flood event. A stack of 3 or 4 of these rocks removes the equivalent of HUNDREDS of years of potential habitats, oxygen infusion into the water, or accelerates/decelerates the rate of erosion in the area you removed/added the rocks by hundreds of years. Simultaneously, you are impacting the riparian zone (edge of the waterway), an incredibly important habitat for terrestrial, aquatic, and amphibious plant and animal life. Changes erosion at the edge of a stream, river, or lake impact the whole body of water in all of the same ways as listed above.
Knowing when not to intervene is an equally important aspect of being a good steward to your natural environment as knowing when to intervene. Let nature do it’s thing and you’ll have even more beauty to enjoy when you are surrounded by it
and a rule in geology is the bigger the rock, the more force it takes to move
pretty much a rule everywhere tbh
Always good to reiterate! Lol
“Leave only footprints” makes sense to me.
The beauty of nature is that it’s already beautiful and touching would diminish that. God/Universe/The Matrix’s Architect is like a zillion times better at beauty than man, you can’t improve it, leave it alone.
It’s okay to witness the marvel of the Earth and not tamper with. I have never understood why katz need to be touching stuff. I think it’s more than meaningful to take in the wonder of nature through senses and leave it at that. We can capture it’s magic through art and technology but just leave it alone.
Actually it’s not okay to witness the marvel of nature because actively seeing is interacting with it. We need most of the planet closed off to human interaction and that includes seeing. Of course I get a pass because I’m a conservationist but I’ll take many pictures, you can experience it in VR.
:data-laughing:
footprints with dead bugs squashed in them? stop walking on the nature.
What the fuck happened to Leave No Trace? And the losers who try to use Indigenous practices (PSA: Indigenous peoples aren’t a monolith and Indigenous peoples are composed of hundreds of numerous tribes and nations, many of which do not have rock stacking as a cultural practice btw) to justify their pathetic rock stacking need to be reminded that despoiling natural habitats and taking shit that doesn’t belong to you is peak colonizer behavior.
If an entire river is completely transformed with rocks all over the show in weird ways for like a mile, sure, you may well be upsetting the ecosystem in some way. If this happens in a couple spots on a river, the impact will be negligible. And they’re just rocks, a new arrangement will make new habitats for different local lifeforms.
Don’t forget that humans are in fact also a part of nature, we’ve been world-wide and in our modern form for like 200k years, nature has had time to adapt to low-scale low-technology human impacts.
Do you see rocks stacked like this without human interference? Wildlife has not adapted to live in towers of rock, it has adapted to live where the removed the rocks used to be. Waterways are a very sensitive habitat, and while you may think taking a few rocks here and there does not have an impact, it very much does. It impacts water speed, nutrient composition, TDS, dissolved oxygen, and this is without even getting to the physical alteration of the habitats.
Humans are a part of nature indeed, but humans also have the wisdom to learn how they are harming the environment by acting in ways the non-human world does not.
Not without human interference. But my point is homo sapiens and ancestors/relatives have been doing stuff like ‘stack rocks’ for well over two hundred thousand years, quite plausibly two million plus years, that is basically nature.
I struggle to believe there’s evidence that moving some rocks has any non-negligible effect on local populations or biodiversity. Life is very, very, rarely as fragile as you describe. But please share if there is indeed such evidence and I’ll change me mind.
And you personally are not nearly as in touch with nature as your ancestors which relied on it directly to survive. They knew what water flow would result in less fish spawn, what the amphibians needed to eat to survive, etc.
You are a much more casual observer of nature. You are a guest who does not need to alter it for your survival, and you are wise enough to learn how your actions are detrimental to it. You and I both know that “humans are a part of nature” is not a good reason to cause active harm to it when you know better. Messing with the commons because you personally find it aesthetically pleasing is just as bad as harming the commons for any other reason, perhaps worse since you have nothing to gain from materially harming it in this way. Why do you think literally every national park asks you to leave no trace?
In regards to your “struggling to believe”
Stone-stacking as a looming threat to rock-dwelling biodiversity
Aye, well there are two aspects here - one, thanks for the evidence, that’s cool, I concede the point. And two, this is clearly an american phenomenon that is much more prevalent than I ever would’ve imagined.
So given the context and info, I very much concede my point and appreciate the educating, thank you!
Oxygen used to be poison.
Is it valuable to try and restore the world to the state it was when most species were poisoned by oxygen?
There is a deep problem with mythologizing the present state of the world as ‘valuable’. It is totally arbitrary because you are essentially picking one point among infinite to value.
Oxygen used to be poison.
Oh PLEASE lmaoooooooo spare me. Yes, clearly my post is advocating for a return of the earth to the era of stromatolites. Make Earth Mesoproterozoic again!
Nobody is mythologizing the present state of the world, but it is objectively valuable to have intact natural spaces. Get this fake deep shit out of here and respect the commons
Rocks are also where most species lay eggs so you are probably smashin those little eggs and removing the ability for species to lay eggs easily :(
Also how fish avoid predation, so it could cause local ecological collapse
Going to go pull a large, flat rock from a river and grill a steak on it while I inject myself with a syringe full of plastic I heated on a spoon. You mad, lefty?
What are you a fluvial geomorphologist or something
If there is a fluvial geomorphologist in the room I will leave the floor to them to do any more explanation, but no I’m not lol. Definitely a fun field of study that I considered though
I do hydrogeology, so not exactly there but adjacent. TBH, the whole struggle sesh feels like the person responsibility side of climate change. Like, yeah, its technically true, but you couldn’t do in a century what the Army Corps of Engineers did for shits and giggles in a week.
On the flip side, there’s no real reason for most people to fuck with river rocks in the first place, so just like, don’t? Also, I have a feeling the biology side is more significant - a lot of stuff lives under river rocks.Hello geology field comrade!
Yes it’s the biology side that is much more severely impacted. Of course we know that individuals are only responsible for a minuscule percent of the total damage done to these sensitive ecosystems, but the main difference is that the places people ARE out there stacking rocks aren’t the dredged coal barge channels in the Allegheny river that are long dead, it’s the places we’ve specifically set aside to be refuges for surviving species. In these cases, there is directly measurable impacts on species diversity and density where areas are frequented by visitors. A striking and sad example is Smoky Mountain NP, which has quite literally the highest density of salamander species on the planet. Of the 30 species in the park, 10 are majorly threatened by water condition changes resulting in accelerated spread of disease, TDS, O2 saturation, etc.
The biology side isn’t my specialty either, but you and I both know how quickly conditions can be changed, especially in small waterways
Great Smoky Mountains is an especially rough one. One of the most otherwise untouched areas of the country exposed to huge tourism. They’ll get too close to a moose one of these days :inshallah:
But really, the rest of the Blue Ridge Parkway is just as pretty and much less crowded. People need to go visit Doughton Park or something
Some friends work a campground in western NC and it’s a big issue with campers setting the rocks up for photos and displacing hellbenders, which are both really cool and endangered.
I really like hellbenders so this pisses me off
Yes, salamanders are a great example of how moving even a handful of rocks, something seemingly harmless, can have such a horrible impact. It changes the amount of dissolved oxygen, and as a result the salamanders in the immediate area and downstream can not survive. It’s very sad
Also, don’t do this in alpine zones or really anywhere with a potential to go off-trail. Cairns can be useful in the mountains but they need to be strategically placed. Those high-altitude areas take centuries to regenerate and the rocks are important habitat/soil anchorage.
This struggle session was brought to you by: rocks.
Climate change be like:
Sounds nice but do you have a source for your claims?
I’ve posted them twice in this thread but you may have to weed through the comments to find them lol
This thread made me realize that i never touch river rocks, just ones above the waterline. Weird.
thanks for the info dude! i will never stack rocks now!
Based and good stewardpilled
