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

This project will assess the status and trends of water quality in lakes within the Southwest Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network (SWAN). This will be a synthesis project, with little or no new data collection anticipated directly as part of this project. These data originate from within SWAN national parks managed by the U.S. National Park Service, with collection carried out by NPS staff and representing up to a 10-year dataset, with lakes re-sampled semi-regularly across years. Research under this award will be guided by the following questions: 1) To what extent do lakes, or samples within lakes, group along an identifiable gradient, and what environmental or other conditions drive these groupings? 2) Are there apparent intra- and interannual trends or trajectories of water quality change within and across lakes? 3) Can future trends be forecast across lakes and interpolated within lakes given predicted future environmental conditions, using the multi-lake network to infer conditions even in cases where data are sparse?