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Thomas Nalepa honored with IAGLR Lifetime Achievement Award

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 18, 2017

Contacts: Tomas Höök, IAGLR Past-President, [email protected]; Lars Rudstam, Awards Committee Co-Chair, [email protected]

DETROIT — The International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) honored Thomas Nalepa Thursday evening with its 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award. Presented at IAGLR’s 60th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research, the award recognizes important and continued contributions to the field of Great Lakes research over a period of 20 years or more. Nalepa is best known for his seminal work on invasive mussels, including zebra and quagga mussels, and their effects on Great Lakes communities.

Currently a research scientist with the University of Michigan Water Center, Nalepa previously worked for 35 years at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).

“His work has particularly improved our understanding of the impact of non-native species—particularly zebra and quagga mussels—on all components of the Great Lakes ecosystem, from phytoplankton through fishes,” notes Ronald Griffiths, Aquatic Ecostudies Limited, in Dutton Ontario. “This insight has greatly improved our ability to understand and predict changes in water clarity, blooms of cyanobacteria, health and abundance of fishes, and abundance of unionids and other macroinvertebrates.”

According to Deborah Lee, GLERL Director and long-time IAGLR member, “Tom had the originality and creativity to identify and address multiple issues that emerged during his career. He was at the forefront of documenting and studying the invasion and rise of dreissenid mussels, which required a scale of work not commonly seen in ecological studies.”  

Nalepa also established long-term monitoring programs in lakes Michigan and Huron and as a result, was among the first to detect the decline of Diporeia, a valuable food source for Great Lakes fish.

For all his accomplishments, note collaborators Alexander Karatayev and Lyubov Burlakova from Buffalo State’s Great Lakes Center, “he is also an amazingly humble man, always listening and always very attentive to other people’s opinions.”

These qualities make him a valued collaborator, excellent mentor, and a respected and trusted representative of the Great Lakes science community. Colleagues note his effective and straight-forward communication style. “Tom worked (and still works) easily with people from many backgrounds and conveys information at a technical level appropriate for the audience,” notes Craig Stow, senior research scientist at GLERL. Nalepa is featured in Making Waves: Battle for the Great Lakes, a new documentary about invasive species. He also is mentioned in the section about the dreissenid mussel invasion in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, an award-winning book by Dan Egan, who is this year’s recipient of IAGLR’s Vallentyne Award for outreach.

Over the years, Nalepa has shared his passion for and knowledge of the Great Lakes with countless students and early career scientists. “I benefit greatly from his approachable nature and dedication to his research,” notes Ashley Elgin, research ecologist at GLERL. “He is committed to passing along the institutional knowledge necessary for us to continue the historic monitoring programs that he initiated, thus preserving the quality and legacy of his research.”

Elgin goes on to recount a story about doing field work with Nalepa a couple years ago about the EPA R/V Lake Guardian. “Despite having pulled up thousands of Ponar grabs over many decades, his excitement was palpable as we sampled one of the few sites in southern Lake Michigan where Diporeia can still be found,” she recalls. “When not on deck, he worked tirelessly in the ship’s lab to dissect hundreds of freshly collected mussels to assess their body condition. It is this work ethic that helped Tom to document the many changes in the Great Lakes ecosystem following the introduction of dreissenid mussels.

Nalepa has been an active and valued member of IAGLR throughout his career. He served on the IAGLR Board of Directors, including as president in 1990-91. He was an associate editor of the Journal of Great Lakes Research for almost 20 years, has co-authored more than 40 articles in the journal, and in 1997 earned the Chandler-Misener Award for best paper in the journal. He also received the IAGLR Editor’s Award in 2002 and the IAGLR Appreciation Award in 2010.