5/18/2015  |   13:30 - 13:45   |  103C

FROM DISPERSAL ACROSS SYSTEMS TO RESTORATION ACROSS THE U.S. Early in Dave Allan’s career he was a major player in pushing forward our understanding of invertebrate drift in streams – what factors control and what the consequences are for stream organisms. Five years into my first faculty position at a small college, I took a leave of absence to work with Dave at the University Maryland to ask if we could take theory and ideas from marine systems and apply them in streams. This resulted in a very successful collaboration and eventually also a permanent move to Maryland where the rest of my career has been spent. It was some 15 years later that Dave and I spent several hours and several bottles of wine discussing the idea of a national river restoration synthesis. Eventually this became the National River Restoration Science Synthesis. The latter has had a huge impact and now ranks among one of the most cited publications coming out of an NCEAS synthesis project.

Margaret Palmer (Primary Presenter/Author), University of Maryland, mpalmer@umd.edu;

5/18/2015  |   13:45 - 14:00   |  103C

ECOLOGY OF PLACE: CONTRIBUTIONS OF J. DAVID ALLAN TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF PREDATION IN OPEN SYSTEMS Studies of predation traditionally focus on how predator-induced mortality explains prey population oscillations and community composition. Studies initiated by Allan and continued by his disciples for over 40 years in high-elevation streams of western Colorado have enabled us to reevaluate the generality of those traditional views. While early observations fit the traditional model of negative correlation between predator and prey abundance, results of a ground-breaking whole-stream experiment showed that predation by salmonids did not explain variation in abundance of primary consumers (mayflies) or large invertebrate predators (stoneflies). Instead, this experiment demonstrated that high prey mobility can obscure potential effects of predation. Expanding Allan’s natural history observations to many years of experiments in multiple streams forced traditional thinking to give way under a progression of evidence supporting the under-appreciated importance of non-consumptive effects of predators. This collective research motivated a new general conceptual model that in open systems with high levels of prey dispersal, the predominant influence of predators may result from adaptive changes in prey behaviors and life histories, rather than from predator-induced mortality.

Barbara Peckarsky (Primary Presenter/Author), University of Wisconsin, Madison, peckarsky@wisc.edu;

5/18/2015  |   14:00 - 14:15   |  103C

DAVE ALLAN’S LEGACY AND THE EMERGENCE OF EXPERIMENTAL STREAM ECOLOGY: UNDERSTANDING THE FUNCTIONAL ROLE OF FISHES IN RUNNING WATER ECOSYSTEMS Over the last forty years our understanding of the role of biotic interactions in streams has progressed dramatically. Moreover, the toolbox employed by stream ecologists has developed whereby running water ecosystems provide some of the best examples of ecological concepts in real world settings. I will begin by describing the significance of Dave Allan’s foundational studies on fishes in stream ecosystems, and his pioneering contributions towards the emergence of experimental stream ecology. I will then provide examples of where we stand today in our understanding of fish as strong drivers of stream ecosystem structure and function. Stream ecology has transitioned from a largely observational field that overlooked the significance of biotic interactions to a highly experimental, hypothesis-based science where interactions play a central role. Building on this foundation, the importance of fish and other organisms as major organizing forces is now firmly established.

Alexander Flecker (Primary Presenter/Author), Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, asf3@cornell.edu;

5/18/2015  |   14:15 - 14:30   |  103C

THE NATURAL FLOW REGIME: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE The “natural flow regime” concept has played an important role in advancing aquatic conservation in the last 20 years. It was conceived as a synthesis of basic ecological understanding that could be translated into management action, and JD Allan played a very significant role in its formulation. The science and practice of “environmental flows,” which aims to mitigate undesirable impacts of dams and diversions has been greatly informed by natural flow regime thinking. But the practice of e-flows is based assumptions that are undercut by rapid climate change and other forms of non-stationarity. Major challenges facing the continued acceptance and application of e-flows include the need to move from a static representation of hydrologic variation to a more dynamic framing where shifting baselines and multiple ecological endpoints are embraced in order to transition from a restoration to an adaptation perspective. Natural flows thinking can guide management actions to guide conservation in a non-stationary and uncertain future, even in highly altered systems where valued ecosystem functions are threatened by further hydrologic alteration.

LeRoy Poff (Primary Presenter/Author), Colorado State University, n.poff@rams.colostate.edu;

5/18/2015  |   14:30 - 14:45   |  103C

SERVICE BEYOND THE UNIVERSITY: DAVID ALLAN’S MANY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORK OF THE NATURE CONSERVANCY Thanks to David Allan’s participation as a science advisor to the Michigan Chapter of The Nature Conservancy in the mid 90’s, I learned of a job opportunity for an aquatic ecologist with The Nature Conservancy’s Great Lakes Program. Almost twenty-years later, I am still with the Conservancy, and have had the privilege of benefitting from his many contributions to the organization, in his role as science advisor, as a board member and through his research. This talk will highlight those contributions and how they reflect and forwarded the evolution of the Conservancy’s work on freshwater. In the mid-1990’s, the Conservancy shifted to see its work in the context of ecoregions just as David shifted his work to use spatial data to tease out the relationship between land cover and land use on the ecology of rivers. As we have brought a broader view of ecological context to our work, David has been right there with advice, tools and data to support new scales of planning and action.

Mary Khoury (Primary Presenter/Author), The Nature Conservancy, mkhoury@tnc.org;

5/18/2015  |   14:45 - 15:00   |  103C

DEFINING PROTECTION FOR THE WORLD'S RIVERS: A NEW GLOBAL METRIC David Allan’s work bridging stream ecology and conservation has inspired and guided a new generation of freshwater conservation biologists. Among the areas of conservation science growing out of his work is a focus on the potential of protected areas (PAs) to benefit freshwaters. PAs are a cornerstone strategy for terrestrial and increasingly marine conservation, but their use in freshwaters has received far less attention, especially within global PA gap assessments. In part this is because defining and evaluating ‘protection’ for freshwaters is complicated by the link of aquatic integrity to impacts in upstream catchments. As well, high-resolution maps of the world’s freshwaters have been lacking. Now, with new, highly accurate global datasets of running waters, we can assess how upstream or upland activities may compromise ‘protected’ rivers. We have developed and applied, globally, a measure of riverine protection that integrates both local and upstream catchment protection and present the results here. Our scalable metric can be applied to evaluating progress toward the Convention on Biological Diversity target of 17% protection for inland waters.

Robin Abell (Primary Presenter/Author), Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, rabell70@gmail.com;