Abstract Resource development can have a negative impact on species productivity and diversity through the loss and fragmentation of habitat. In many countries, developers are required by law to offset such impacts by replacing lost habitat or providing other forms of compensation. In the case of broad scale development, offsets often cannot be constructed to replace lost habitat “like-for-like” (i.e., they are not ecologically equivalent). In freshwater ecosystems, one approach to habitat offsetting is to create new lake ecosystems, called compensation lakes, to replace lost riverine habitat. In this study, we use a long-term data set (2008–2015) of fish and benthic invertebrate communities from Canada's first compensation lake in the oil sands region of Alberta, to address (1) whether the assembly of the fish community has a trajectory that is influenced by management activities and (2) determine whether the community composition in the habitat offset is common in natural lake ecosystems within the region. We find a significant decline in the mean trophic level of the lake, where 61.9% of the variation in trophic level is explained by time indicating a strong structuring influence on fish communities. This outcome has enabled the compensation lake to meet overall and single species productivity targets, but we find that the species assemblage and composition is not common within the region. A combination of the founding species community and reduced connectivity of the lake has contributed to the current fish community structure, which may be problematic for the sustainability of the habitat offsetting targets. Our study highlights the need to establish multiple conservation guidelines, using both productivity and diversity based metrics, to provide the best ecological equivalency, which can produce better function, resilience and health within focal species communities in habitat offsets that are not “like-for-like.”

中文翻译：

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加拿大艾伯塔省油砂地区第一个补偿湖的社区集会和栖息地抵消目标的可持续性

摘要 资源开发可能通过栖息地的丧失和破碎对物种生产力和多样性产生负面影响。在许多国家，法律要求开发商通过更换失去的栖息地或提供其他形式的补偿来抵消这种影响。在大规模开发的情况下，通常无法构建补偿来替代“同类”丢失的栖息地（即，它们在生态上不等效）。在淡水生态系统中，栖息地补偿的一种方法是创建新的湖泊生态系统，称为补偿湖，以取代失去的河流栖息地。在这项研究中，我们使用了来自加拿大阿尔伯塔油砂地区第一个补偿湖的鱼类和底栖无脊椎动物群落的长期数据集（2008-2015），解决 (1) 鱼类群落的集合是否具有受管理活动影响的轨迹，以及 (2) 确定栖息地偏移中的群落组成在该地区的自然湖泊生态系统中是否常见。我们发现湖泊的平均营养水平显着下降，其中 61.9% 的营养水平变化由时间解释，表明对鱼类群落的结构影响很大。这一结果使补偿湖能够满足整体和单一物种生产力目标，但我们发现该地区的物种组合和组成并不常见。创始物种群落和湖泊连通性降低的结合促成了当前的鱼类群落结构，这可能会影响栖息地抵消目标的可持续性。我们的研究强调需要建立多个保护指南，同时使用基于生产力和多样性的指标，以提供最佳的生态等效性，这可以在栖息地抵消的重点物种群落内产生更好的功能、恢复力和健康。喜欢。”