Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID AK-2024-003

Impacts of beaver engineering on arctic aquatic community composition

Institute: Alaska
Year Established: 2024 Start Date: 2024-09-01 End Date: 2025-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $25,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $25,000

Principal Investigators: Sebastian Zavoico

Project Summary: North American beavers are engineers whose impacts in southern latitudes are well researched. Recently, beavers have expanded their ranges into the arctic tundra, where their impacts likely differ due to the presence of perennially frozen soil, known as permafrost. Based on current geophysical research and observations, we hypothesize that beavers accelerate the effects of climate change in the Arctic, making arctic stream and river biota look more like boreal streams. The aim of my project is to identify fish and invertebrate species using DNA filtered from water, and to compare communities of these species between streams affected by beavers and streams unaffected by beavers. I expect to find species more associated with warmer waters in the beaver-affected streams, and more typical arctic species in non-beaver-affected streams. This work will help evaluate the overall effects of beaver range expansion on stream ecosystems, including the subsistence resources streams provide.