Riverscape Ecology: Theory and Application for Understanding and Conserving Lotic Fishes

During the last decade, ecologists have developed a general conceptual model for lotic fishes that explicitly incorporates a spatially continuous and multi-scale “riverscape” perspective.  Recent advances in riverscape ecology have expanded the theory and applied these concepts in an ecosystem context to better understand how lotic fishes use resources and, in turn, influence the biological and physical processes that create and maintain these resources.  Applications of new technology and innovative approaches to measuring fish distribution, movement, life history, and trophic ecology have further increased the spatial and temporal extent, resolution, and continuity of investigations into the linkages between these patterns and processes.  Given these new developments, it is time to consider the usefulness and support for these conceptual models, and how they might be modified or improved.  This symposium provides a forum for research that addresses both development and testing of general theory in the riverscape ecology of lotic fishes, as well as applications of these concepts to advance fish conservation and management.  A hallmark of such research will be approaches that investigate lotic fish ecology in spatially (and perhaps temporally) more continuous ways, and employ multi-scale designs to improve ecological understanding and conservation of stream and river fishes and other aquatic biota.