IAGLR18IAGLR18

An IAGLR plenary featuring Yves Prairie

The Carbon Footprint of Lakes: From Transformation Processes to Large-Scale Patterns

Friday, June 22
11:40 a.m. - 1 p.m.
AC223 (AA112 for overflow)

The event will be live streamed. Watch online!

Lakes are known to be highly active reactors of carbon. Their collective fluxes to the atmosphere as CO2 and CH4 are large enough that it becomes urgent to be able to predict how inland aquatic systems will react in the face of global change. In this talk, I will argue that while carbocentric limnology has made great progress over the past decade, the links between small-scale processes and large-scale patterns are still elusive and difficult to quantify, and are at the heart of our ability to predict the future role of lakes at local, regional, and global spatial scales. Drawing from our own experience on small lakes, I will attempt to identify some of the major bottlenecks in achieving a more integrative limnology. 


About the speaker

YVES PRAIRIE is  professor of biology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. A founding member of the GRIL research center (a multi-university research center in limnology since the early 1990s), he was its director for 9 years. His main research focus is on all aspects of carbon cycling. He initiated and co-led the NCEAS working group on the role of lakes and reservoirs in the global carbon budget. He holds a UNESCO Chair in Global Environmental Change and currently is the president of the International Society of Limnology. His research interests combine carbon and nutrient biogeochemistry, statistical modelling of ecosystem processes and, more recently, tries to dabble in physical limnology.