Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Recent estimates indicate that 80% of the world's population is exposed to a high level of threat to water security. Across the world, population growth translates into increased needs for food and natural resources that threaten the diversity and services produced by aquatic ecosystems. This situation leads to a paradox where denser populations that require more ecosystem services threaten the stability of aquatic ecosystems that support those services they need. A long-standing question in conservation biology is, how can we conserve aquatic ecosystems in the context of intensifying terrestrial land use? Predicting the impacts of anthropogenic terrestrial disturbances on aquatic ecosystems requires a better understanding of inter-ecosystem dynamics. Essentially, one needs to be able to understand i) if and how disturbances propagate from terrestrial ecosystems through aquatic food webs ii) how these community structural changes translate into functional changes at the scale of ecosystem processes and iii) ultimately how these functional changes cascade in space to affect an entire watershed in terms of diversity, functioning, but also the provision of ecosystem services for human communities. This last point emphasizes the probable interaction between a very localized disturbance, the structure of the affected biotic community as well as the spatial configuration of the watershed which will necessarily constrain the area of ??influence of this disturbance. My research program therefore aims to predict the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances on biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems at the watershed scale by using the conceptual tools offered by metacommunity and metaecosystem theories. With support from the Chair program, the lab will expand its research capacity by implementing a unique combination of experimental and monitoring approaches to better understand how human perturbations can spread through the landscape and eventually influence the gain or loss of some essential supporting aquatic ecosystem services related to water quality, but also secondary production and energy recycling. This research program will thus contribute to our understanding of metaecosystems and how they can influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning while also addressing important conservation challenges facing policy makers and resource managers related to the effects of global changes (resource harvesting, agricultural runoff) on aquatic ecosystems.