Reading the Signs of Change
Marine and freshwater ecosystems are experiencing an unprecedented combination of stresses caused by human activities. Throughout the world, a rapidly growing number of lakes, rivers and coastal waters are subject to contamination and nutrient enrichment, with a resultant degradation in microbial diversity, sometimes towards noxious species that have serious negative impacts on food web processes, habitat quality and human values.
As Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Biodiversity and Environmental Change, Dr. Warwick Vincent will focus on high-latitude ecosystems to address issues related to aqueous and northern environments, climate change and biodiversity. His work will involve international collaboration across several disciplines and partnerships between academia and industry to develop and apply novel technologies for monitoring the freshwater environment.
The program will examine the response of aquatic food webs to environmental change and explore the implications of these responses for conservation, monitoring and management of aquatic resources. This emphasis on microbial communities reflects the fact that their responses to environmental change are likely to spread throughout the entire ecosystem.
Dr. Vincent will address three key questions: How will climate change affect high-latitude freshwater ecosystems?; How does climate influence microbial food web interactions at the river-sea interface?; and How will the microbial communities of human water resources respond to climate change?
An essential component of research and training in each of these areas is to define the biodiversity of photosynthetic communities at the base of aquatic food webs. Although part of Dr. Vincent's work will involve analysis by advanced microscopy and molecular techniques, a key approach in his laboratory and field work will involve the quantitative analysis of algal and bacterial pigments using high-performance liquid chromatography and spectroradiometry.