Leaf litter quality
In each campaign, additional leaf material was randomly hand-picked next
to each quadrat locations in the riparian and instream area, separately,
to estimate overall carbon and nitrogen content of each site’s
habitat-specific leaf stocks. Samples were preserved in a freezer and
random sub-samples (approx., 10% of original sample) were freeze dried
for one day, grinded into powder and encapsulated (0.005g ± 10%) in tin
capsules. Nitrogen (%N) and carbon (%C) concentrations were determined
with an elemental analyser (FlashEA 1112 HT, Thermo Electron
Corporation), using aspartic acid (C: 36.09%; N: 10.52%) as a
calibration standard, and sorghum floor as quality control (C: 41.26 %
± 0.20 ; N: 1.47% ± 0.25).