Co-Directors

I am a landscape limnologist who works collaboratively to examine the roles that disturbance (human and natural), spatial scale, and heterogeneity have on lake biology and chemistry. I address questions that advance scientific understanding and are directly applicable to aquatic ecosystem management and conservation. In addition, my research explicitly includes the economic and social factors that both impact lakes and drive their management and conservation. My main areas of interest include examining the role of (1) aquatic plants (native and alien) and their management in lake foodwebs and (2) the landscape in structuring lake biology and chemistry. My students, collaborators, and I use a variety of approaches to conduct our research, such as lake field surveys, mesocosm experiments, and statistical modeling (e.g. multi-level modeling).

My interest in landscape limnology grew from early studies examining land-water interactions and the spatial arrangements of lakes in a landscape. In recent years, I have become intrigued by the possibility of extending the perspectives, questions and conceptual frameworks beyond traditional freshwater boundaries to consider lakes, streams and wetlands in a more integrated fashion. This is a challenge I expect to spend the rest of my career exploring. Currently my students, collaborators and I are pursuing 3 areas of research: (1) studying cross-scale interactions in freshwaters (2) the effects of land use on freshwater nutrients, and (3) developing approaches for freshwater classification.