Mariella Becu

Investigating lakes and streams as connected systems is critical to understanding their structure and function throughout the landscape. Small lakes are productive ecosystems for aquatic biota, and they serve as a connection between the terrestrial and aquatic by way of lake inflow streams. However, downstream contributions, especially to lakes, are unknown and this is rarely considered within riparian forest harvest management. The objective of my research is to investigate the stream inflow contributions to lake productivity, and the effects on lake productivity from forest harvesting along inflow streams within British Columbia. This research aims to advance our understanding of stream-lake connectivity, as well as biotic community dynamics in relation to upstream forest harvesting.