Neil Rooney

Neil Rooney completed his M.Sc. at the University of Western Ontario (plant sciences) and Ph.D. at McGill University (limnology) before coming to the University of Guelph as a postdoctoral fellow in 2003 (food web ecology). In 2009 he took a faculty position at the University of Guelph that was sponsored by the Saugeen Ojibway Nations (SON). In that position, he worked primarily with the SON on evaluating the potential environmental effects of proposed developments in their Traditional Territories. During that time, SON was particularly concerned about the cumulative effects of human activities on the Lake Huron ecosystem, so his research focused on developing frameworks for assessing the effects of multiple stressors on ecosystems using food web metrics. He continues to work on the Great Lakes ecosystems and with First Nation partners and currently has research projects based in Lake Huron (the effects of net pen aquaculture on aquatic food web structure) and Lake Superior (the potential for mercury mobilization into aquatic food webs). His research program focuses on using biotracers (stable isotopes and fatty acids) to delineate food web structures in aquatic ecosystems that confer long term stability to ecosystems. Outside of his research efforts, he is committed to efforts promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the environmental sciences.