Focus Area - Community Structure

Community structure reflects the ecological conditions that affect diversity, distribution, and the interactions among producers and consumers able to survive in nearshore environment. Macroinvertebrates (including crayfish), fish, and macrophytes are visible aquatic organisms that interact to create the community structure representative of Lake Tahoe’s nearshore ecosystem. Detection of changes in this community structure can infer changes in the status of Lake Tahoe’s nearshore condition, which has changed over time as a consequence of changing patterns in land use, recreational activities, climate, species distributions, and other unidentified factors.