I am studying landscape influences on stream ecology. My research employs remote sensing and GIS to analyze direct and indirect mechanisms responsible for structuring stream communities.
Streams are three dimensional ecosystems.
Most past research into community structure has focused on the longitudinal linkages in river networks. The concept of the River Continuum is a convenient abstraction, but we must further explore the spatially-explicit interactions which also determine the abundance and distribution of stream biota. One may identify the spatial autocorrelation inherent in biotic distributions using a number of techniques, including geostatistical, point process, and irregular lattice models. I am using this approach to examine whether biotic assemblages in neighboring streams in a network are good predictors of local, reach-scale, assemblage structure. Further, I am using aerial photography and satellite imagery to investigate indirect influences of land use on stream assemblages.