Our goal is to understand the transport and fate of nutrients, pollution, sediments and biology between rivers and near-shore zones of the Great Lakes. The threats to our fresh water make it urgent to set up the first hub for scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars, and other water activists to work together to safeguard the future of fresh water in Ontario.
Contaminants in the watershed can ultimately end up in rivers and lakes, degrading water quality, ecosystem health, and the ecosystem services these water bodies provide. Research in our group seeks to better understand how hydrology influences contaminant transport and fate from terrestrial to aquatic systems.
One contaminant of growing concern is microplastics. Research at our group investigates the sources, fate, and impacts of microplastics, contributing to our understanding of how these contaminants of emerging concern will change aquatic environments.
Within the aquatic environment, biogeochemical and physical processes near the sediment-water interface influence organic carbon, nutrients and pollutant cycling and sequestration. Our group uses field and laboratory analyses to investigate how seasonal, climate change-induced, or direct anthropogenic changes alter biogeochemical cycling in the aquatic environment.
At basin and sub-basin scales, research done by our group investigates how physical processes impact water quality, habitat suitability, and the biological responses to changes in these parameters over timescales varying from hours to years.
New and existing aquatic invasive species also disrupt and modify ecosystems. Work done by our group investigates the current and future spread, and impact these species will have on native ecosystems and explores ways to mitigate their negative impacts.
Our group also develops novel ecological models to address eutrophication problems, quantify land-sea interactions, identify climate change effects on aquatic ecosystem phenology, and study food web dynamics.
