Proposal background 1&2

Small aquatic ecosystems and wetlands are critical contributors to both freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services (Williams et al., 2004; Verdonschot et al., 2011). In fact, ponds contribute the most to freshwater biodiversity, housing more species, more unique species, and more rare species than other small aquatic ecosystems (Williams et al., 2004). Only recently has this evidence come to light and with it has come a growing need to explore anthropogenic effects on small aquatic ecosystems, in order to reverse and prevent future damage to these oases of biodiversity (Biggs et al. 2016). Though the University of Massachusetts Amherst did collaborate with the MA Department of Environmental protection (MassDEP), MA Office of Coast Zone Management (MassCZM), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on a project to assess and monitor local aquatic ecosystem integrity, it was focused on forested wetlands, coastal salt marshes, and wadable fresh streams (web reference 1) and was designed to show that indices of biotic integrity (IBIs) could be developed directly from the empirical data (web reference 2). In this proposal we concentrate our research on ponds as their contribution to local biodiversity and anthropogenic stressors affecting their health have not yet been studied. We chose plant diversity as our first measure of ecosystem health due to it being a strong component of the biotic diversity parameter found in the ecosystem integrity (EI) framework (Müller, 2005) used by the European branch of the international long-term ecological research (ILTER) network to determine ecosystem health (Haase et al., 2018). In addition,the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) that uses essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) (Haase et al., 2018) to monitor changes in biodiversity on a global scale uses plant diversity as a key taxonomic parameter to measure community diversity (Schmeller et al., 2018). Thus, since plant diversity is a point of intersection between the two major frameworks that aim to determine ecosystem health, it is likely to serve as a strong indicator of the health of the small aquatic ecosystems that are the focus of this study.