Controls of Structure and Function of Aquatic Ecosystems in the Arctic

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9400722 Hobbie Freshwater systems are a major feature of the arctic landscape, despite the low precipitation, because permafrost prevents drainage and evaporation is low. Their relative biotic simplicity offers advantages to researchers attempting to sort out the various controls and interactions of arctic lakes and streams. An understanding of the ecological processes is a necessary part of the long-term goal of this project: prediction of the effect of changes in land use and climate on arctic stream and lake ecosystems. This project will be based at an LTER site, Toolik Lake, on the North Slope of Alaska, and will make use of long-term experiments of stream and lake fertilization and manipulations of the dominant predator in lakes, the lake trout. These manipulations are maintained by the LTER group. The project will also use LTER-produced data on basic environmental conditions including climate, lake physics and chemistry, nutrient concentrations in streams and lakes, and stream flow. The project will move strongly towards synthesis and use data derived from all the past studies plus data from recent manipulations on streams and lakes. The long-term goal of the synthesis and modeling is to understand the movements and transformations of water, nutrients, and organic matter through an entire watershed in the high Arctic. ***