PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #100: Landscape Ecology.
Presiding: T. Crist
Friday, August 9. 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Gila Meeting Room, TCC.
Linking pattern and process: The relationship between landscape metrics and freshwater communities.
Kearns, Faith*,1, Kelly, Nina1, Resh, Vincent1, Rosenberg, David2, Reynoldson, Trefor3, 1 University of California, Berkeley, CA2 Freshwater Institute, Winnipeg, MB, Canada3 Environment Canada, Wolfville, NS, Canada
ABSTRACT- Metrics for quantifying landscape pattern are abundant and relatively easy to compute, though deriving ecological meaning from these metrics has remained elusive. At the same time, sampling and quantifying freshwater community composition as an indication of water quality has become relatively routine, while understanding how the landscape influences these communities remains a challenge. Traditionally, freshwater research and management have been conducted at the local habitat and reach scales, leading to the assumption that factors at these scales are more important than landscape scale features in structuring stream communities. Several recent studies have challenged this assumption, but produced conflicting results. As it becomes increasingly clear that large-scale landscape alteration is affecting aquatic communities, finding a meaningful way to quantify this impact is crucial for determining the most appropriate spatial scale for managing and restoring stream systems. Using a large data set for the Fraser River Basin in British Columbia, Canada, we are examining the relationship between landscape pattern metrics and aquatic invertebrate communities across a gradient of land use impacts. Preliminary results indicate that some landscape metrics are able to explain more variation in aquatic invertebrate community composition than local scale physical variables, suggesting that landscape pattern analysis may prove useful in further elucidating how large-scale land use change is impacting freshwater ecosystems.
KEY WORDS: landscape metrics, macroinvertebrates, water quality, land use