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GLERL ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS RESEARCH PROGRAM
General Background
The Ecosystem and Food Web Dynamics Program is an integrated effort to understand food web processes and to assess ecosystem responses to anthropogenic stressors. More specifically, the goals are: (1) to improve knowledge and predictive understanding of food web processes and their relationship to environmental conditions (physical and chemical); and, (2) to apply this knowledge to better understand the causes, effects, and solutions to problems such as eutrophication, toxic contaminants, nonindigenous species, habitat modification, and climate change. The Program consists of investigators with expertise in each of the major food web components, and with experience in field, experimental, and modeling approaches. Research projects are conducted at different levels of complexity. Individual studies range from simple observations of life history traits or distributions of a single species, to large multi-species efforts that define interactions and processes of several trophic levels within the ecosystem. The program recognizes the need to conduct both basic and applied research. Basic research places an emphasis on improving our fundamental understanding of food web structure (number of trophic levels, biotic interactions), function (flow of materials), and components (species, populations, and communities). Such research is concerned with the development of expertise, approaches, and tools to assess food webs in a variety of different systems (lakes, coastal marine) and under different conditions (nearshore, offshore). Basic research also provides the framework for recognizing the significance of emerging issues.
Applied research focuses on ecosystem response to anthropogenic stressors. Frequently, the division between basic and applied research is obscure, such as when basic research is needed to develop new approaches/models to define impacts of a new stressor. This is currently the case in the Great Lakes where, over the past several decades, numerous invading species have led to unprecedented and unpredicted changes in the food web. In a broad sense, the structure and function of the food web defines the relative health of the entire living ecosystem. Changes or disruptions in the flow of energy through the various trophic levels creates instability, a potential loss of transfer efficiency, and uncertainty in predicting ultimate outcomes of management decisions. Some challenges of food web research are to separate natural variation from stressor response, to understand various links between food web components and factors that may influence these links, and to predict how food web changes may influence use of available resources.
Last updated: 2004-03-25 mbl