Ecosystem Sustainability and Management

Application of basic ecological knowledge is essential to sustain ecosystems and their services. Here we use our novel limnological and statistical approaches to quantify causes of environmental degradation in diverse aquatic ecosystems, including First Nation’s territories, coastal estuaries, prairie lakes, northern freshwater deltas, salmon nurseries, high latitude ecosystems, alpine lakes, and iconic sites worldwide (e.g., Winnipeg, Windermere, Neagh, Champlain, Great Salt, Vattern, Kinneret, Okeechobee). In all cases, we balance novel scientific discovery with clear management recommendations to initiate legislative change and enable sustainable management (see above). Our leadership has resulted in the Energy-mass (Em) flux framework, a new conceptual paradigm adopted by 15 international research groups to quantify the unique and interactive effects of humans and climate on lakes, and formally unify limnology and paleoecology.