Recovery is RELATED: Restoring Ecosystems by Linking Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecological Dynamics

北方地区拥有地球上60%以上的淡水，这是所有生命的基本要素。但是，气候和土地利用变化等人类活动正在极大地改变这些景观，并威胁到水生生态系统提供的关键服务，如清洁饮用水和健康的鱼类种群。当代水生保护范式强调污染物的投入和水资源开发是水安全和生物多样性下降的原因，但当这两个因素单独得到改善时，恢复尝试就会失败。越来越多的地方流域被视为水生生态系统的关键控制。最近的一项发现激发了这一想法，即通过水生食物网向上动员能量的途径——从微生物到鱼类——依赖于源自陆地植被的有机物质，这证明了“清洁水是森林产品”的格言。任何改变从周围集水区输入淡水的有机物质的质量和数量的因素都将明显影响水生生态系统服务的提供。火灾、森林害虫和资源开发（如采矿和伐木）是正在改变北方地区的新出现的干扰，但很少有人知道它们将如何改变从陆地植被到水生生态系统的营养物质的长期循环。显然需要一种新的集林业和水资源管理于一体的流域科学，以便使决策者了解通过将陆地上的行动与水中的过程联系起来保护淡水供应所需采取的行动。我们的研究将测试在不同气候情景下，水生食物网的生产力是否随陆源有机质的数量和质量而增加。我们还将回答陆地上的干扰是否会减少植物生物量和改变植物凋落物的质量，从而抑制淡水动植物的生产力。我们的方法是在一个共同的湖泊环境中创建96个人工生态系统，并将场地暴露在不同数量和质量的有机物质中。我们将使用新一代DNA测序等尖端技术来测量微生物、藻类和食草动物群落的反应。我们还将在每个地点种植与经济上重要分类群密切相关的定居贻贝物种的标记个体，并监测它们的长期生长和生存。这项工作的最终目标是开发一个空间显式的动态流域模拟模型。我们想回答的问题是，如果X%的栖息地被火灾或昆虫爆发所消耗，那么鱼类的食物储备将改变Y%。这项研究的结果将与英国和国际政策高度相关，通过展示陆地和水生生态系统之间的紧密联系来管理淡水供应。例如，欧盟制定了保护淡水的立法，但这忽视了土地利用对湖泊水质和生物群的影响。随着欧盟开始改革共同农业政策，围绕英国许多社会经济重要流域的广阔森林种植园和牧场的未来也在讨论之中。我们的目标是表明土地利用的任何变化都必须考虑以有机物形式的能量如何分散到水生生态系统并支持其生产力。最后，该项目将在改善区域土地利用规划和管理以及恢复环境受损景观方面具有许多应用。我们将与采矿业和政府的合作伙伴密切合作，向他们介绍恢复退化流域植被的最佳做法。

Boreal regions hold upwards of 60% of the planet's freshwater, an essential ingredient for all life. But human activities, such as climate and land use change, are dramatically altering these landscapes and threatening the delivery of key services provided by aquatic ecosystems, such as clean drinking water and healthy fish populations. Contemporary paradigms of aquatic conservation have emphasized inputs of pollutants and water resource development as causes of declining water security and biodiversity, but restoration attempts are failing when these two factors alone are improved. Increasingly, local watersheds are seen as critical controls of aquatic ecosystems. This is spurred by the recent discovery that pathways of energy mobilization upwards through aquatic food webs - from microbes to fish - rely on organic matter originating from terrestrial vegetation, proving the adage that "clean water is a forest product".Any factor that changes the quality and quantity of organic matter input into freshwater from their surrounding catchments will clearly influence the delivery of aquatic ecosystem services. Fire, forest pests, and resource development, such as mining and logging, are emerging disturbances that are transforming boreal regions, but little is known as to how they will change long-term cycling of nutrients from terrestrial vegetation into aquatic ecosystems. A new watershed-level science that integrates the management of forestry and water resources is clearly needed to inform decision makers of the actions needed to conserve freshwater supplies by linking actions on land to processes in water.Our research will test whether the productivity of aquatic food webs increases with the quantity and quality of terrestrial organic matter under different climate scenarios. We will also answer whether disturbances on land that remove plant biomass and change the quality of plant litter will dampen the productivity of freshwater plants and animals. Our approach will be to create 96 artificial ecosystems in a common lake environment and expose sites to different quantities and qualities of organic matter. We will measure the responses of microbial, algal, and grazer communities using cutting-edge technologies such as next-generation DNA sequencing. We will also plant tagged individuals of a sedentary mussel species closely-related to economically important taxa within each site and monitor their long-term growth and survival. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a spatially-explicit, dynamical watershed-level simulation model. We want to answer the question if X% of habitat is consumed by fire or insect outbreaks, then food stocks for fish will change by Y%.Outcomes of this research will be highly relevant to the UK and international policy around managing freshwater supplies by demonstrating strong linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. For example, the EU has developed legislation to protect freshwater but this ignores the effects of land use practices on lake water quality and biota. The future of extensive forestry plantations and pastures surrounding many socio-economically important watersheds in Britain are also being debated as the EU begins reforming the Common Agricultural Policy. We aim to show that any changes in land use must consider how energy in the form of organic matter is dispersed to aquatic ecosystems and supports their productivity. Finally, this project will have many applications for improving regional land use planning and management, as well as restoring environmentally damaged landscapes. We will work closely with partners in the mining industry and government to inform them of the best practices for re-vegetating degraded watersheds.