We examined scales of spatial variation in communities, food webs, and elemental pathways in eight alpine stream food webs.  This study and its results are to provide reference conditions prior to a replicated, whole-ecosystem experiment.  The experiment, spearheaded by the USDA Forest Service, aims to study the impacts of proscribed burns and mechanical thinning of forests of the relatively small watersheds.  Examining spatial variation in baseline conditions is important to account for the potential interactions of sites and treatments in poorly replicated whole-ecosystem experiments.  Multivariate analyses suggest that across-stream variation in invertebrate community functional composition is commensurate with spatial proximity, even though only half of the eight streams contain fish.  Stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen show that the abundant FPOM is terrestrially-based in most streams, thus providing a source of similar material for the base of the stream food webs.  Where they are present, fish integrate terrestrially-fixed carbon in two ways; directly through consumption of terrestrial invertebrates, and indirectly through consuming invertebrates which assimilate terrestrially-fixed carbon in FPOM.  The role of terrestrially-fixed carbon in headwater stream food webs is thus likely to act to homogenize variation due to other sources.