"The role of ultraviolet radiation, nutrient stress and temperature in the productivity and dynamics of freshwater phytoplankton communities."

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Lakes are an important part of our environment. They provide a variety of services (drinking and cooling water, recreation, fish production, etc.) and the quality of many of those services depends on the abundance and type of microscopic algae (phytoplankton) to be found in the water. The phytoplankton are in turn sensitive to human disturbances, including nutrient inputs. Lakes also serve as important indicators of large scale environmental change. For example, altered ice cover, temperatures and phytoplankton are among the sensitive indicators of regional climate variations. The work in this proposal is intended to provide an improved knowledge of how certain aspects of climate change (especially variations in solar ultraviolet radiation, UVR, but also temperature) affect phytoplankton and to provide better tools for modeling and predicting effects of climate variations (as well as more local human impacts) on lake ecology. To do this, we will further develop a class of sensitive, cost-effective methods for assessing phytoplankton that could greatly increase the effectiveness of science-based environmental management. These methods use the amount of fluorescent light emitted by the phytoplankton to judge their abundance, species composition, health and productivity. We will use these methods to determine how UVR affects phytoplankton, how we can predict impacts of UVR, and how we can predict changes in lake ecology in response to climate variation and local impacts such as nutrient inputs. The results will provide insight into how lake productivity and water quality changes under the pressure of climate variations and other stresses, and should increase the availability of tools for science-based environmental management.