Study Area

In this blog, I am studying the biodiversity of a portion of the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest that includes the Leatherwood Wilderness.  It is bounded on the north and east by the White River.  I am particularly interested in the novel aquatic ecosystem created by altered water temperature of the river, and any affects to the surrounding terrestrial environment.  Upstream from this section of the National Forest there are two deep reservoirs, Bull Shoals Lake on the mainstem of the White River, and Norfork Lake located 4.5 river miles up the Norfork River from its confluence with the White.  The outflow from these dams is from the deep, cooler water hundreds of feet below the surface.  This cold water is inhospitable to many of the native aquatic species, and they were forced to lower stretches of the river where the temperatures have stabilized.
This created a unique environment of cold water, at a southern latitude.  In the early 1950's rainbow and brown trout were stocked in the tailwater streams, and have grown to world record sizes, thanks to high productivity and longer growing seasons.  This has been followed with other species of trout, of which millions of individuals have been stocked in the following decades.  I have not found documentation of any other intentional stocking of species other than game fish, and I am curious how other aquatic species compositions have been affected (especially macroinvertebrates), or if other non-native coldwater species have found their way into the area through unintentional .  I am also interested if there have been any documented changes to the terrestrial biodiversity with the changes in the water temperature of the river.
Here is a link to a map that shows the section of the Ozark-St Francis National Forest I am interested in.

National Forest Map Viewer