SCALER: Scale, Consumers And Lotic Ecosystem Rates

Can small scale ecological experiments be applied to understand structure and function of regional ecological systems?

• Do patch-scale (dm) measurements of ecosystem rates over- or under-estimate reach-scale (100m) rates in streams?
• What abiotic variables drive scaling of reach- to network-scale measures of ecosystem function?
• How do ecosystem rates and the effects of consumers vary between biomes?

Goal:

To develop new insights regarding how best to extrapolate small-scale experimental measurements used by field researchers to large-scale river networks.

Hypotheses:

• Quantifying ecosystem processes at river network scales will require accounting for the distribution of abiotic drivers (temperature, light, flow) defined by heterogeneity that is superimposed on gradients of river size.
• Consumer effects will have influences across biomes via biogeographical patterns of community composition.