Understanding the impacts of landuse and/or climate change on streamflow characteristics, such as peak discharge, sediment transport capacity, flow velocities and depths, within a given region or watershed requires knowledge of fine scale (0.01-10 m) hydraulic channel properties (i.e., detailed cross-sections, roughness, bed material). However, data for channel/reach properties are limited to primarily in-situ measurements.

This study looked at the impact of high nutrient loads from non-point source pollution on the stoichiometry of detrital food webs in suburban streams: basal food resources, primary consumers, predators, and nutrient imbalances between food and consumer.

The US Forest Service contracted with Watershed Sciences to provide LiDAR data collection
for the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest located within the Willamette National Forest,
consisting of approximately 16,700 acres in Lane and Linn Counties, Oregon.
The data were collected on August 10th and 11th, 2008.

Deliverable from the contractor included raw point cloud data, 1 meter bare-earth
and highest hits DEMs. A vegetation layer was produced by subtracting the bare-earth
DEM from the highest hits DEM.

Conservation Management and Community Integration: Comparative Case Studies for Puerto Rico
Lindsay Cray ^1,2 William Gould² Diane Kuehn¹ and Charles Hall¹

1. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse , NY 13210.

2. USDA Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.

Human settlements in both arid lands and cities must, of necessity, alter hydrological regimes and geomorphology to provide clean, reliable drinking water, water for agriculture, and protection from flooding. Additionally, people also create substantial modifications to provide water for manufacturing, recreation, aesthetics, and sense of place. All of these practices can result in elimination or degradation of existing aquatic ecosystems, as well as creation of new ecosystems such as artificial lakes, stormwater retention basins, mitigation wetlands, groundwater recharge ponds, etc.

Human management of landscapes is a primary cause of global environmental change. In residential landscapes, homeowner yard management can affect ecological properties and processes locally and regionally. For example, turfgrass lawns are now one of the largest irrigated crops in the U.S., contributing to high water and fertilizer use. Social drivers, such as personal values or Homeowner Association (HOA) regulations, also impact individual yard management decisions.

Soil microbes are key drivers of ecosystem processes, yet their role in regulating landscape-scale vegetation change is not known. Comprehensive studies of treeline position have noted that ectomycorrhizal fungi may be an important factor delineating the boundary between forest and tundra. Yet, these critical plant-fungal symbioses are sensitive to wildfires. Fire is the primary landscape-scale disturbance in the boreal forest and increasingly important in tundra.

The conversion of agricultural and rural lands for development purposes reflects one of the greatest threats to key ecosystem services in the United States. This poster addresses land use change dynamics in southern Florida, linking them to local governance-zoning institutions. Study of land use and zoning patterns informs broader questions of relevance to the LTER, including: “What is the pattern of land and water use change in urban and working systems: what are the temporal and spatial patterns of human activity and ecosystem dynamics in LTER regions?

Despite the increased recognition of the importance of urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation on social-ecological systems, comparative research on cities across the United States is limited. Therefore, we developed a cross-site comparative study on the land spatial pattern across five LTER sites in the US Southwest. This poster examines the land pattern characteristics for an individual site - Central Arizona Phoenix (CAP).