Stream biodiversity under change

We aim to use several long-term data sets allowing up to 40-year perspective to boreal stream biodiversity change. We will also use a shorter (4 years) data set on ecosystem process rates to relate interannual variation in ecosystem processes to variation in invertebrate biodiversity and abiotic variables in 30 streams spanning a gradient from near-pristine to heavily impacted sites.These unique data sets help us answer an intensely debated question in community ecology, that is, has stream biodiversity responded positively to water quality improvement that occurred late last century and does this management credit overshadow climatic and land-use debts? Our research will be based at Oulanka Research Station which allows us access to state-of-the-art facilities. This project also has a practical aim of providing scientifically justified recommendations for environmental managers and decision makers about long-term biodiversity responses to anthropogenic pressures.