The role of long-term monitoring in meeting science and policy needs: Lessons from 35 years of research at the Turkey Lakes Watershed

English Abstract:

The Turkey Lakes Watershed (TLW) is located on the Precambrian Shield in central Ontario, Canada and has been the site of multi-discipline ecosystem research since 1979. The 10.5 km² watershed is within the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence forest region with an uneven-aged tolerant hardwood forest having 90% of the basal area as mature to over-mature sugar maple. Within the watershed, 4 lakes, 13 first-order catchments, hundreds of permanent sample plots have been monitored to elucidate spatio-temporal processes controlling hydrological and biogeochemical patterns. While acid rain was the initial focus of the watershed study it has proven to be an important outdoor laboratory to study many topics such as forest harvesting, climate change, carbon accounting, fate of nitrogen and calcium depletion, among others. The TLW study has proven effective due to its partnership between 3 federal departments (NRCan, EC and DFO) and provincial government (Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry), which provide the core funding and Crown Land reserve to keep the facilities open and collect long-term baseline data. Universities have contributed with shorter-term graduate student projects and provided additional funding for equipment and infrastructure for tremendous value-added research. Ongoing success of watershed studies such as TLW involve strengthening internal partnerships among government, university, local stakeholders and formalizing linkages with other watershed studies to ensure it can continue to address new and emerging scientific concepts and policy-driven hypotheses.