Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Alaska
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

The purpose of this award is to assess the status and trends of freshwater communities and habitats in streams on Alaskan public lands utilizing a long-term water quality dataset. These data originate from within central Alaska national parks managed by the U.S. National Park Service as well as other lands in the region managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Research under this award will be guided by the following questions: To what extent can sites across Alaskan public lands be classified meaningfully based on a suite of shared environmental conditions, and do these classes, in turn, contain clearly defined ecological communities? How are species and habitat distributions altered across Alaskan public lands based on habitat conditions and expected environmental shifts under climate change or human use such as mining, and are certain ecological communities or habitats at particularly high risk of decline?