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Q&A ViewAttendees 6

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Grad SysEB: Ecology

Linking hydrological effects of megafire to benthic macroinvertebrate communities using environmental DNA

Monday, November 1, 2021
9:00 AM – 9:12 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 207
In-Person Student Competition
In the western United States, anthropogenic climate change is causing larger, more severe fires and an increase in extreme precipitation events. The compounded impact of these two changes can create massive ecosystem disturbances. In the fall of 2018, this scenario occurred in central Utah when a 610 km2 megafire affected a large portion of the Utah Lake watershed. Two weeks later, the remnants of Hurricane Rosa swept across the state, resulting in torrential rains that triggered debris flows and flash-flooding in the fire scar. Because aquatic macroinvertebrates are used as indicators of ecosystem health, we used both hydrochemical and environmental DNA samples to understand the impact of these mega-disturbances on the biodiversity and recovery of aquatic ecosystems. We established monitoring stations and collections sites across the Utah Lake watershed in both burned and unburned catchments, as well as across areas with various land use. We compared samples from the summers of 2019 and 2020 to investigate how the progression of biogeochemical and biological succession compare following large ecological disturbance events. Understanding the impacts of increasing disturbance events and the ecosystem recovery process will inform decisions that will protect native species and effectively facilitate habitat and species restoration.