Aquatic invertebrate ecology and paleoecology in Arctic and temperate ecosystems

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My long-term research goals include examining long-term variability in freshwater ecosystems in response to human-influenced and natural stressors. This research uses both neo- and paleo-limnological techniques. In Arctic systems, at present there are large deficiencies in our understanding of freshwater ecology. Long-term dynamics of benthic communities in freshwater aquatic systems are little known, and current knowledge of Arctic benthos is scarce and mainly derived from faunal taxonomic surveys with little or no accompanying ecological context. As the benthos are the dominant or sole energy pathway between primary producers and top trophic levels (e.g. fish and birds) in ponds and lakes, it is therefore difficult to assess or predict food-web consequences of enhanced-greenhouse climate warming in high latitude regions. In temperate systems, a multitude of anthropogenic stressors (including recent human-induced climate warming, watershed disturbances, to name a few), are influencing aquatic ecosystems with unknown consequences, as little is known about how these stressors interact to influence ecosystems, and there is often a lack of pre-disturbance data about the ecological condition of systems that have been affected by anthropogenic or natural stressors over long time scales. Lack of knowledge about pre-disturbance conditions makes it difficult to properly assess the effects of these stressors on the ecological condition and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. This research will generate critical baseline ecological data both through the limnological sampling of benthic invertebrate populations in ponds and lakes, and determining pre-disturbance conditions via paleolimnological approaches. This research will provide assessments of the ecological response of aquatic systems to long-term environmental change, through the paleolimnological analysis of lake and pond sediments. This research also involves the development of new paleolimnological approaches to expand the number of indicators that can be utilized to assess long-term ecological variability and response to stressors using paleolimnological methods.