Beaver Library

Beavers, Castor canadensis in North America and Castor fiber in Eurasia, are widely referred to as nature’s engineers due to their ability to rapidly transform diverse landscapes into dynamic wetland ecosystems. Few other organisms exhibit the same level of control over local geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecological conditions. Though freshwater ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to changing climate, beavers and their wetland homes have persisted throughout the Northern Hemisphere during numerous prior periods of climatic change. Some research suggests that the need to create stable, climate-buffered habitats at high latitudes during the Miocene directly led to the evolution of dam construction. As we follow an unprecedented trajectory of anthropogenic warming, we have the unique opportunity to describe how beaver ecosystem engineering ameliorates climate change today. Here, we review how beavers create and maintain local hydroclimatic stability and influence larger-scale biophysical ecosystem processes in the context of past, present, and future climate change.

Understanding where and how many dams beavers (Castor canadensis) will build is an important habitat restoration question, especially as beavers are increasingly recognized for their ecosystem-scale benefits and as beaver-related restoration accelerates. Several models exist for predicting the dam building behavior of beavers in North America. However, not all of these models are applicable outside of the ecoregions where they were developed or validated.