The ecological organisation of lake districts: general introduction

1. Here we introduce a special issue of Freshwater Biology that focuses on the landscape-scale spatial and temporal patterns exhibited by multiple lak es within lake districts. We call this patterning, and the processes that l ead to it, the 'ecological organisation of lake districts.' 2. Papers in this special issue share the common goal of examining landscap e-level processes that lead to spatial and temporal patterns of lake charac teristics in individual or multiple lake districts. Several papers focus on the degree to which multiple lakes have synchronous among year variability in various physical, chemical, and biological variables. Others focus on t he landscape-level processes that lead to spatial patterning of lake charac teristics Finally, a few papers examine the relationship between spatial pa tterning and temporal dynamics. Papers in this special issue present result s from 10 lake districts from North America, Europe, and Antarctica.