In our new paper published this month in Ecological
Applications (http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/12-1872.1), we explored the important role of the regional spatial scale for
understanding and managing lakes.
We found that the region that a lake is in really matters to
its chemistry and nutrient levels. In other words, lakes that are closer
together have more similar levels than lakes that are farther away. We actually
quantified this pattern of different lake chemistry and nutrient levels
depending on the region a lake is in, and showed how this approach could be
used for studying other ecosystems. We
also studied the factors that make regions different from each other, such as the
amount of forest land, agricultural land, and groundwater contribution, as well
as the type of geology present.
Lots of research is conducted at the local-scale, such as
within a lake, lake network, or ecological region (also called an ecoregion).
On the other end of the spectrum, there is research being conducted at the
continental and global scales. However, less research has been done on the
intermediate, regional scale. One way that both terrestrial and aquatic
scientists and managers have included the regional scale in their work is by
grouping ecosystems within a 'regionalization framework' that is created by
dividing a continent into contiguous, often hierarchical, discrete spatial
units of similar landscape features that are sometimes called ecoregions or
regions. However, there are many different regionalization frameworks to choose
from, and none of these frameworks were created specifically to capture
among-lake variation, which was the focus of our study.
Link to Paper??
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