Tuesday, June 11
One of the greatest challenges faced by ecologists, water quality managers, and other environmental scientists is using appropriate time scales to assess environmental change. Due to the lack of systematic long-term monitoring data, it is often difficult to determine the nature and timing of ecosystem changes. Furthermore, as environmental assessments are performed typically after a problem is identified, critical data regarding pre-disturbance (or reference) conditions are rarely available. This presentation summarizes some recent developments in assessing the effects of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems using lake sediments as archives.
Increases in algal production (especially cyanobacteria) seem to be constantly in the news. The dominant drivers of these increases are complex. Undeniably, nutrients play a role, but much of our recent paleolimnological research is concluding that limnological changes driven by recent climate warming, with concomitant changes in lake ice and stratification patterns, are linked to increased production. New paleoenvironmental approaches are also being used to assist conservation biologists by providing temporal perspectives to many ecological issues. For example, long-term population data for waterbird species in the Great Lakes are sparse, with most censuses having taken place in the last ~30-40 years (if data exist at all). Sediments from shallow ponds on summer nesting islands provide a unique archive to extend census data by tracking the arrival and population shifts of waterbirds, as well as their associated ecological impacts. Challenges posed by reconciling time scales of environmental change (often measured in decades or centuries) with that of politicians (often based on a few years) and industry (often based on days or “quarters”) will be highlighted.
JOHN P. SMOL is a professor of biology at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario), where he also holds the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change, and is currently the president-elect of the Canadian Academy of Sciences. He founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab, a group of approximately 40 students and other scientists dedicated to the study of long-term global environmental change, and especially as it relates to lake ecosystems. John has authored over 570 journal publications and chapters since 1980 and has completed 21 books. Much of his research deals with the impacts of climatic change, acidification, eutrophication, contaminant transport, and other environmental stressors. He is a frequent commentator on environmental issues for radio, television, and the print media. John was the founding editor of the Journal of Paleolimnology (1987-2007) and is the current editor of Environmental Reviews. Since 1990, John has received six honorary doctorates and has been awarded more than 60 research and teaching awards and fellowships, including the 2004 NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal as Canada’s top scientist or engineer and the International Ecology Institute Prize. John holds the distinction of being the first scientist since the establishment of the Royal Society of Canada (in 1883) to win three individual medals, having won the Miroslav Romanowski Medal for environmental sciences, the Flavelle Medal for biological sciences, and the McNeil Medal for the Public Awareness of Science. He has won 13 teaching, mentoring, and scientific outreach awards and was named by Nature, following a nationwide search, to be Canada’s Top Mid-Career Scientific Mentor. In 2013, John was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for his environmental work and in 2018 a Fellow of the Royal Society (London).
