SPECIAL SESSIONS

Asian Freshwater Futures

The types and intensities of benthological research in the different countries of Asia have been varied, commonly faunistic and descriptive and ranging from essentially none to highly sophisticated. This research has been conducted in some countries mainly by indigenous scholars and in others mainly by foreigners. In recent decades, in response to escalating population growth and rapid development in many of these countries, there has been an increased focus on the use of freshwater biota, especially macroinvertebrates, for monitoring water quality. In this session, Asian and western colleagues will outline the current principal directions of freshwater research in their countries, some of the most pressing remaining unanswered questions and data gaps, and their vision for theoretical and applied investigations in the coming decades.

Organizer: John Morse (jmorse@clemson.edu)

Acid Deposition: 25 Years After the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

In 1990, the Clean Air Act Amendments called for a substantial reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions from industrial plants and has led to a decrease in sulfate concentrations and an increase in the pH of precipitation across parts of the Northeastern US. However, the pH of precipitation remains below 5.0 and continues to affect forests, headwater streams and lakes in especially in catchments with shallow soils. This session will present contemporary studies on the effects of acid deposition on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, any evidence of recovery resulting from the Clean Air Act Amendments, and efforts to remediate acidification by adding calcium silicate or calcium carbonate to restore soil calcium and help neutralize surface waters. We welcome papers that assess the structure and function of stream and lake ecosystems in relation to acidification, recovery, and mitigation efforts. A synthesis paper will examine the history of acid deposition and what we can expect in the future.

Organizer: Randy Fuller, Barry Baldigo (rfuller@colgate.edu)

Invertebrate Systematics and Faunistics

This session will focus on studies that refine our understanding of the phylogenetic relationships, distribution, life history and habitat preferences of aquatic invertebrates. This session will bring together some of the leading research in systematics, biodiversity, biogeography and applied taxonomy. Speakers will discuss the current status of taxonomic groups and the expected changes as methods evolve. The goal of this session is to showcase current research in these fields and discuss future directions and implications for freshwater invertebrate studies.

Organizer: Sean Sullivan (ssullivan@rhithron.com)

Temporary wetlands: more than just puddles

Temporary wetlands are important habitats that occur throughout much of the world. These habitats support unique assemblages of flora and fauna that are adapted to annual and/or sporadic wet-dry cycles. Many terrestrial organisms such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects utilize temporary wetlands for a portion of their life cycle and/or forage in them, making these habitats essential components of landscapes. Additionally, wholly aquatic communities reside in temporary wetlands by employing a wide variety of strategies to overcome the dry phase of the hydrocycle. Temporary wetlands are closely connected to surrounding terrestrial habitats and food webs through exchange of energy and nutrients including biomass export of emerging aquatic insect and amphibian metamorphs. Small wetlands also play a critical role in metapopulation dynamics at the landscape scale. Due to their seasonal drying and often short hydroperiods, many temporary wetlands have been converted for agriculture and urbanization, leading to severe losses of temporary wetlands worldwide. Groundwater extraction has also altered the hydrology of temporary wetlands in some regions. Along with land-use changes and groundwater depletion, temporary wetlands are also being impacted by climate change. The goal of this session is to highlight the unique ecology of temporary wetlands and the threats facing these dynamic ecosystems. This session would be of interest to a broad range of SFS members with interests in: wetland ecology, food webs, subsidies, aquatic-terrestrial linkages, adaptations, conservation biology, hydrology, climate change, and land-use changes.

Organizer: Kelley Fritz, Brian O'Neill (k.a.fritz@siu.edu, oneillb@uww.edu)

Confident decision making and effective environmental management: challenges and approaches for accounting for variability in aquatic systems

Water quality criteria and biological thresholds designed to protect aquatic systems and guide management decisions (e.g. point source discharge limits, restoration efforts) have been implemented in many regions across the globe. Although it is understood that natural systems are spatially and temporally variable, robust estimates of variation in water quality and biotic endpoints are relatively rare. Additionally, it is often unclear how spatial and temporal variability is considered in the development and application of regulatory endpoints. Effective water resources assessment and management requires quantitative information on the variability of ambient and biological conditions in aquatic communities. This session invites researchers and managers to use basic research and applied studies at local, state, national, and international levels to examine aquatic system variability in the context of ecosystem management and decision-making. Research and management efforts that highlight the link between efforts to understand, describe, and reduce uncertainty and improved environmental decision-making are of particular value. Description and discussion of management approaches outside the current regulatory paradigms are also encouraged. Those attending the session will be better equipped with practical qualitative and quantitative tools and strategies they can use to explicitly consider uncertainty in decisions affecting water resources quality and availability.

Organizer: Camille Flinders Doug McLaughlin (cflinders@ncasi.org)

Freshwater species distribution models: contributions to conservation

In the light of environmental degradation, freshwater research will have to increasingly aim for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. Species distribution models offer the possibility to enhance the understanding of the relationship between freshwater biodiversity and the environment through the identification of relevant environmental variables. Distribution predictions help drawing continuous occurrences while making predictions of the status of freshwater biodiversity in the future, in line with future environmental change scenarios. Their successful implementation in freshwater conservation issues is recent, but many more applications are possible. This session explores possible approaches to apply species distribution models to environmental conservation, landscape planning and improving freshwater research in general.

Organizer: Mathias Kuemmerlen, Sami Domisch (mkuemmerlen@senckenberg.de)

Quantifying ecological traits to predict species, community and ecosystem responses to changing environments

There is an urgent need to improve the understanding of the interrelationships of the environment, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, eventually both to estimate global change impacts and to guide aquatic management and conservation. Ecosystem functioning is closely related to the distribution of traits that organisms possess, which reflect ecological characteristics of species, communities, or ecosystems. These traits may be a general characteristic of species or drive ecological processes (effects traits), or they may reflect a preference or sensitivity to change related to varying environmental conditions (response traits). Integrating these traits into a predictive framework for ecology remains a challenge. We call for contributions from all levels of biodiversity and taxonomic interest, which expand the concept of using ecological traits to understand ecological response to environmental change. Examples include developing new methods to derive environmental preferences or sensitivities, linking effects and response traits for ecological prediction, relating organismal traits to functional changes in communities and ecosystems, incorporating trait information into ecological management, integrating traits across organizational levels, and advancing understanding of linkages between the environment, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Organizer: Sonja Jähnig, N. LeRoy Poff (sonja.jaehnig@igb-berlin.de)

Stream macroinvertebrate response to disturbances in Neotropical streams: recent advances and future directions

Streams in Latin America and the Caribbean are confronted with a host of stressors, ranging from direct anthropogenic modifications - such as dam-building, urbanization, and agriculture - to natural disturbances associated with climate change, including species extirpations and climate-driven acidification. As this region is experiencing rapid development, regulatory bodies within the Neotropics are increasingly applying science-driven tools for management, including using macroinvertebrates to determine environmental flows and requiring biomonitoring as part of environmental impact statements. There is a growing body of research documenting the responses of Neotropical macroinvertebrates to disturbances, which may be useful for the design of stream conservation strategies. Some of these responses show consistent patterns with temperate biomes, while others show unique trends that point towards the need for continued tropical research. Here we seek to examine the state of knowledge regarding macroinvertebrate response to natural and anthropogenic stressors, highlighting topics such as macroinvertebrate resilience, potential roles as bioindicators, and community functional response to disturbance. The session will include the perspectives of researchers from long-term projects as well as those addressing disturbance in understudied contexts or addressing novel questions.

Organizer: Carissa Ganong (carissa.ganong@gmail.com), Rebeca de Jesús

Public Participation in Freshwater Research

The growing field of public participation in scientific research (PPSR) includes citizen science, volunteer monitoring, and other forms of organized research in which members of the public engage in the process of scientific investigations: asking questions, collecting data, and/or interpreting results. PPSR helps freshwater scientists deal with common challenges, including access to field sites, availability of long-term and spatially broad data sets, connecting research to societal needs, and building public and political support for research and management. The public benefits as well, by gaining access to technical and scientific expertise to support local efforts to protect and manage aquatic systems. This special session will explore opportunities for PPSR to advance freshwater science by highlighting current research that incorporates public participation in a variety of ways: question development and study design, data collection, data interpretation, and application of results. The session will conclude with an open discussion among participants and speakers on the future of PPSR for freshwater science, considering both opportunities and challenges.

Organizer: Jo A. Latimore, Ayesha Burdett (latimor1@msu.edu)

Advancing biophysical research: Integrating species interactions into ecohydrology and ecogeomorphology

The geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology of rivers are shaped by a complicated suite of biophysical interactions that influence productivity, habitat formation, and ecosystem function. This session explores how trophic and competitive interactions mediate the links between physical processes and biological communities in riparian and aquatic habitats. We are particularly interested in research related to the impacts of biodiversity loss, competition by invasive species, shifts in dominant ecosystem engineers, and food web dynamics on physical processes related to hydrology and geomorphology. Research related to feedbacks between community and trophic interactions and physical processes is also encouraged. Applied topics may also include changes in community composition and assembly in the face of climate and land use change. We seek contributions related to this broad theme, as well as focused presentations on the use of field, laboratory, and modeling exercises to explore the impacts of species interactions on the ecohydrologic and ecogeomorphic conditions of aquatic habitats.

Organizer: Lindsey K. Albertson, Daniel C. Allen, Melinda D. Daniels (lalbertson@stroudcenter.org)

Ozaukee Fish Passage Program - Making Connections Across Our Watersheds

The Ozaukee County Planning and Parks Department has implemented a comprehensive effort to restore aquatic habitat connectivity and improve the ecological function of existing riparian habitats throughout the County portion of the Milwaukee River Watershed and Lake Michigan Basin. The watershed downstream of Ozaukee County is highly urbanized, with little of the formerly-abundant wetland and riparian habitat remaining in its natural state, resulting in reduced native species abundance and diversity. Ozaukee County has significant contiguous tracts of relatively intact, high quality, and/or protected, suitable spawning and rearing habitat, if hydrologically connected and, in some cases, improved. Enhancing the ecological productivity of aquatic and terrestrial riparian habitat directly supports sustainability and/or population recovery for remnant desirable, native, and/or imperiled species. Since 2006, the Department’s Fish Passage Program and partners have identified and removed/remediated over 236 impediments to aquatic organism passage, reconnecting over 128 stream miles and thousands of wetland and floodplain acres. These activities include large-scale dam removal and restoration projects. The Program is also developing a GIS-based fish and wildlife decision-support tool to prioritize in-stream and riparian habitat improvement and restoration projects for the maximum benefit of multiple target species. Tool outputs are guiding ongoing, large-scale habitat projects that include stream remeandering, floodplain and wetland reconnection, and invasive vegetation control. Together, these activities constitute a landscape scale effort to restore the ecological productivity of fragmented and/or formerly degraded riparian habitat to benefit several native, remnant and/or imperiled fish, wildlife, herptiles and bird species. This special session will include multiple case studies of completed and ongoing linear and lateral aquatic connectivity and habitat restoration projects managed by Ozaukee County and partners. It will also highlight additional aquatic connectivity initiatives and projects managed by other partners (e.g., Milwaukee Riverkeeper, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District) in Southeast Wisconsin and feature a presentation envisioning future directions in aquatic organism passage.

Organizer: Matt Aho (maho@co.ozaukee.wi.us)

Transitions in understanding Didymosphenia geminata

The widespread, yet elusive, diatom Didymosphenia geminata has captured the attention of scientists, managers, and policy makers alike. The increasing incidence of nuisance levels of benthic mats of D. geminata globally continues to drive efforts to better understand the basic biology and ecology of this species. Despite these efforts, environmental triggers to mat development as well as the impact to ecosystem processes and seasonal dynamics remain unclear. Recent and ongoing research examines phosphorus availability as a contributor to mat development and stalk length. Yet, the influence of other nutrients and whether the biogeochemical cycles are altered in the presence of D. geminata continues to be enigmatic. As the number of ecosystems containing D. geminata mats have increased over the last decade, it has become clear that eradication of this species is unlikely. Whether D. geminata was present in some of these ecosystems previously or not, it is imperative that the transition in understanding from the research of the past few decades, pushes us forward to a better understanding of the influence D. geminata may have on food web dynamics, ecosystem processes and nutrient cycling in these oligotrophic lotic ecosystems. This special session will be key in identifying the current research gaps and potential for future research towards helping managers, scientists, and policy makers decide on the avenue of action for each watershed.

Organizer: Lisa Kunza, Carole-Anne Gillis (lisa.kunza@sdsmt.edu)

Landscape approaches to nutrient and sediment management in streams: research and application

Streams form dense networks that extend into and interact with the landscape. Subsequently, streams are intimately linked with biotic and abiotic drivers on the landscape, many of which have been altered through anthropogenic activities. Scientists and water resource managers have identified excess nutrients and sedimentation as major stressors of biologic communities, stream function and water quality. While nutrient and sediment loading to streams vary in natural environments due to differences in hydrology, lithology, and geomorphology, pathways and rates are altered when anthropogenic land uses are present. Of particular interest to researchers and managers is to identify areas that have comparatively high contributions of nutrient and sediment loadings within catchments for management prioritization. In addition, identifying those areas with the greatest load reduction benefit for the least land management effort is an ideal management goal for impaired stream restoration. Advances in GIS and remote sensing technology have led to a wide variety of tools and techniques to understand how landscape composition and practices impact stream ecosystems at multiple spatial scales. This special session will bring together talks on novel landscape research and management of nutrient and sediment reduction planning and implementation at multiple spatial scales (riparian, local watershed, State, inter-State and National). Presentation topics will cover research on: nutrient and sediment load estimation to streams, linkages between landscape level loads and in-stream response, best management practice (BMP) targeting and implementation, land to water delivery pathways, cumulative impacts, and socio-economic research. A specific request of speakers will be to address the issues of scale in their individual talks and a concerted effort will be made to offer a full breadth of presentations from across the globe.

Organizer: Mike Shupryt, Lucinda Johnson, Mike Paul (Michael.Shupryt@wisconsin.gov)

Dynamics of carbon, nutrients, and trace elements in river, lake and other freshwater systems

Lakes are hotspots for nutrient and carbon cycling and play an important role in processing organic and inorganic substances from terrestrial, atmospheric and aquatic sources. Terrestrial inputs, including sources from rivers, streams and groundwaters, provide vast amounts of carbon, nutrients, trace metals and other chemical species, including emerging contaminants/pollutants to the lakes. At the same time, the presence of carbon, nutrients, trace metals and contaminants largely regulate the water/environmental quality and ecosystem health in freshwater environments. Therefore, understanding their abundance, fluxes, chemical speciation, bioavailability, as well as transport and transformation processes is essential. Along rivers and at the river-lake interface, a wide range of biogeochemical processes take place in the water column and sediments. These processes include physical mixing, biological uptake and production, photochemical and biological degradation and chemical reactions. Additionally, under increasing human activities and rapid climate and environmental changes, lakes are now more subject to anthropogenic impacts, but the influence on carbon, nutrients and metals dynamics remain poorly understood. The nearshore phosphorus shunt in the Great Lakes has been attributed to the invasive species. Indeed, as part of the continuum of the water cycle, lakes respond to climate change and anthropogenic influences through changes in water levels, chemical compositions, fluxes, ecosystem functions, and cycling pathways of carbon and nutrients. Problems such as eutrophication, acidification, land-use, hypoxia, and invasive species exert increasingly negative influences on the lake ecosystems. In this proposed session, we aim to give an overview of recent advancements in biological and geochemical processes regulating the quantity and quality of dissolved organic matter, colloidal and suspended particles, and sediments as well as their associated carbon, nutrients and metals and their transport and cycling pathways in rivers and lakes and their interfaces under the big picture of climate change and increasing number of stressors. Abstracts dealing with basic and applied research on the dynamics of dissolved, colloidal and particulate carbon, nutrients, metals, and emerging contaminants in river, lake and other freshwater ecosystems are all welcome. We are confident that with recent advanced techniques that provide more detailed information of organic matter, nutrients and metals, this session should provide new insights into the dynamics of chemical species in freshwater systems in a changing environment.

Organizer: Zhengzhen Zhou, Laodong Guo (zhou9@uwm.edu)

Go with the flow: Multi-scale biotic responses to flow inform environmental flow assessment and management

Balancing the demands of a growing global population with increasing climatic variability while maintaining freshwater ecosystem integrity is the basis for the development of sustainable water resource planning and management needs. However, there is still a critical need to better understand how organisms or communities respond to the physical flow environment. The promising approach of environmental flows, defined as the components of a flow regime that support organisms and their habitat while maintaining the water needs of society, would benefit from more defined flow-ecology relationships within their proposed frameworks. This session will draw on research examples to provide a wealth of information on biological responses to spatial and temporal variation in flow through increasingly sophisticated observations and experiments incorporating innovations in technology and tool development that are being undertaken to fill critical knowledge gaps. Acknowledging the increasing variability in our freshwater futures with climate change, this session will bring together international experts from multiple disciplines to discuss the latest information on organismal responses to flow, from invertebrates to vertebrates and from micro-scales to macro-scales. The outcome of this session will be to identify new areas of discussion and research, improved collaborations within the field of ecohydrology, and hopefully inform and incorporate the best available information into future sustainable management and policy decisions.

Organizer: Jessica M. Orlofske, Wendy A. Monk (orlofske@uwp.edu)

Deconstructing Cumulative Effects

Aquatic bioassessment programmes are typically aimed at the detection and evaluation of the effects of single industrial activities such as mining, agriculture, urban development, hydroelectric development and logging. One of these activities alone can introduce a variety of stressors into the aquatic environment, often in combinations characterised by complex stressor interactions that can make assessment and attribution of adverse effects on these systems challenging. This challenge becomes more difficult when we are faced with circumstances where aquatic systems are exposed to two or more such activities and cumulative effects become more complex and difficult to interpret. In this session, we bring together researchers from around the world who are developing approaches to detecting and assessing the effects of multiple stressors, in order to provide opportunities for better targeted and effective mitigation measures. The session will begin with an introductory “context� paper that will review the concepts, policy and legislative provisions for cumulative effects assessment requirements in North America, Europe and Australia. This will be followed by a series of papers reporting from a variety of locations around the world on approaches to the assessment of cumulative effects using science. The session will close with a paper summarising the various approaches presented and looking ahead to a future wherein cumulative effects grow in importance and complexity, particularly in the context of a changing climate.

Organizer: John L. Bailey, Keith Somers (jbailey@laurentian.ca)

Our freshwater futures: an educational session particularly for undergraduates

This session aims to inspire undergraduates to pursue studies in aquatic sciences. At previous meetings, undergraduates were familiar with broad scientific disciplines reflecting their academic backgrounds (e.g. chemistry, engineering, mathematics, microbiology, and conservation), but they were not familiar with aquatic science, in particular. In this educational session, well-established freshwater scientists will highlight their respective areas of focus, reviewing intriguing approaches and questions for the future. Topics will span the ecologies of macroinvertebrates and fishes, conservation biology, biogeochemistry, applied research, and environmental policy. At the end of the session, speakers will participate in a question and answer panel addressing the future of freshwater science and how educational training contributes to future research. They will highlight exciting new techniques, discuss where they think the field is headed next, and highlight useful skills for graduate studies.

Organizer: Carla L. Atkinson, Zacchaeus Compson (carlalatkinson@gmail.com)

Reaction rates and residence times in the control of aquatic nutrient transformation

Statistical models of the delivery of nitrogen and phosphorus through watersheds have provided an improved framework with which to address the costs and benefits of changes in public policy and private behavior on water quality improvement. A target of the next generation of watershed models will be to incorporate the physical and biological processes driving nitrogen and phosphorus transformation, removal, storage, and delivery to downstream waters where it is not only the loading but the form, stoichiometry, and timing of delivery that drives phytoplankton production. A simplifying approach relates reaction rates to residence times. This work is well underway and it is being approached from the micro-profile scale of nutrient concentrations across the oxic-anoxic interface to catchment-scale patterns of aquifer-river interaction. We invite presentations on the drivers and controls of nutrient transformation, removal, and storage in aquatic ecosystems, with an additional encouragement to presentations which not only identify those controls but quantify their impact.

Organizer: Dirk Koopmans, Val Klump (koopmans@uwm.edu)

New Science on Oil Spills in Freshwater Environments

The world’s supply of petroleum is increasingly coming from unconventional sources such as oil sands (tar sands) and shales mined in inland locations. Likewise, inland transport of this crude oil to coastal transfer stations, storage facilities, and refineries is increasing, bringing greater risk of oil spills to freshwater environments. There is thus an urgent need for scientific understanding of the behavior (transport and fate) and ecological effects when this oil is released into freshwater environments. This session brings together some of the latest freshwater science from recent spills in North America and abroad, with an emphasis on unconventional oils and ecological effects.

Organizer: Faith Fitzpatrick, Stephen Hamilton (fafitzpa@usgs.gov)

Lakes to landscapes, fisheries to phosphorus, and assemblages to assessments: celebrating David Allan's contributions to aquatic ecology

Dave Allan has been a long-standing member of NABS-SFS, and a critical mentor and colleague to many in our community. He has made many contributions to research and training in aquatic ecology, beginning with his work on life history of zooplankton and stream insects, then shifting to environmental flows and stream conservation, then developing landscape perspectives on stream ecology and conservation, then assessing controls on watershed nutrient budgets, and finally developing multistressor analyses of the Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystem. In honor of his retirement in 2015, this session will celebrate Dave's diverse contributions through research talks by his trainees and collaborators. Collectively, the presenters will represent the arc of Dave's career, and highlight his continuing influence on aquatic ecology and conservation.

Organizer: Pete McIntyre, Alex Flecker (pmcintyre@wisc.edu )