Freshwater Ecology in a Changing World
Freshwater ecosystems provide us with a multitude of services and host remarkable biodiversity. But the health of these systems is declining at a rapid clip from numerous, interacting threats. Therefore, realizing fisheries and freshwater conservation goals against a backdrop of extreme climate and land use change is a key natural resource management challenge facing society today. My research seeks to uncover and understand patterns and processes in nature while conserving or enhancing functioning ecosystems. I work toward this vision with a research program that is quantitative in nature, based in fundamental ecology and ecological theory, and conducted to address the needs of managers and conservation practitioners. My approach is fundamentally problem driven rather than discipline driven, which is why the totality of projects I’ve worked on is broad and draws on diverse concepts and methods.
I am broadly interested in conservation biology (science and implementation at local to regional scales), population and community ecology (freshwater fishes), food web ecology (niche variation, stability, and stable isotopes), and climate change (impacts and adaptation strategies).
Big data and rapidly improving statistical tools are enabling scientists to answer previously unanswerable questions. I use these emerging tools to quantify the mechanisms that drive how fishes and other animals interact with each other and their environments, then apply that knowledge to conservation practice. My research program integrates food web ecology, stable isotopes and physiology, statistical modeling, and conservation science to characterize how and why animals eat what they eat, identify data-driven pathways for aquaitc conservation, and develop new approaches for conserving fish and ecosystems.
Species today face wicked problems such as land-use change, extreme weather, non-native species, and emerging contaminants. I am working to untangle the effects of multiple stressors to inform policy and guide the prioritization of conservation actions.
Ecologists have long searched for structures and processes that impart stability in nature. Food webs have emerged as a central organizing concept in ecology because they 1) link structure and function within ecosystems (e.g., species identity and behavior (foraging) with biogeochemical cycles (matter and energy flow), and 2) bridge levels of biological organization (organism to population and community). I am working to understand the interplay between top-down (predation) and bottom-up (primary productivity) processes, and how that interplay can stabilize or destabilize ecological communities and whole ecosystems.
Applying ecological research to conserve and restore ecosystems, and the biological communities that inhabit them, is my motivation in life. This works best when we can find win-win situations in which both biodiversity and people benefit. So, much of my work revolves around leveraging ecological research to inform conservation action, which I do by co-producing science that is actionable through start-to-finish engagement with collaborators and stakeholders.