The impact of environmental change on freshwater communities

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Canada is home to millions of lakes and thousands of rivers. Ongoing global climate change potentially impacts all freshwater ecosystems, including those in the remotest locations. The objective of my research program is to investigate how ecological communities respond to environmental change. This grant will train highly qualified personnel and fund research that explores if and how communities can cope with the rapid environmental change associated with global change. We will combine experimental and theoretical approaches to study how ecological and evolutionary processes act together to form a response at the level of ecological communities. The ultimate goal of my research program is to contribute to a predictive framework that evaluates the resistance and resilience of communities and ecosystems in the light of increasing anthropogenic impact. Humans depend on functional and predictable ecosystems that provide food and a healthy environment. Human-induced global change is a major concern because it generates multiple changing conditions that likely affect the stability and sustainability of ecosystems on land and in water. Rising temperature is probably the most prominent effect but the "cocktail of changes" relevant for freshwater environments includes a number of factors either associated with fossil fuel burning (increasing CO2, temperature, organic matter) or changes in land use practices (increased load of phosphorus and nitrogen). The proposed research program explores the impact of rising temperature on aquatic communities from two novel, under-investigated angles: extinction risk through loss of dynamical stability and lake ice. In addition, we will address the lack of knowledge about how complex communities respond to a combination of environmental factors that change simultaneously. The proposed research program will investigate the response of assemblages of species to multi-dimensional environmental change. Resource managers and conservation practitioners around the world and in Canada are grappling to make sound predictions about how their systems will respond to environmental change. The typical approach has been to consider species of economic and cultural value individually, and assess their direct physiological sensitivity. However, species respond to change within the context of their ecosystems, and the stability of ecosystems that support individual resource species is critical for any effective conservation and management efforts. The proposed research will advance an understanding of ecosystem stability and change in the context of a changing environment.