Welcoming two new researchers to my lab

In May, I got word that my lab will grow by two during the 2014-2015 year. I'm very happy to announce that I'll have two new postdoctoral research scientists join my lab next year.

Dr. Jean-Francois Lapierre (above) has received a FQRNT Fellowship from the Quebec Government (http://www.frqnt.gouv.qc.ca/en/bourses/index.htm) to partially support his 2-year postdoc in my lab. He comes from the University of Quebec, Montreal where he recently finished his PhD working with Dr. Paul  del Giorgio (http://www.carbbas.uqam.ca/en/group/present-members/41-jean-francois-lapierre.html). He will join the CSI-Limnology team (www.csilimnology.org) researching large-scale patterns and processes governing lakes. I'm looking forward to working with him starting in September.

Dr. Caroline Wynne (above) has received an Irish EPA Fulbight Fellowship to join my lab for six months (http://www.fulbright.ie/record-breaking-40-irish-recipients-awarded-prestigious-fulbright-award). She comes from Dublin, Ireland where she has been a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Ian Donohue at Trinity College, Dublin (https://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/research/research/donohue/researchers_carolinewynne.php). I first met her last summer in Germany at the Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences, and then interacted with her some this year while at QUB. She will join the Lakes as Social-Ecological Systems (http://www.fw.msu.edu/~llrg/social-ecological-systems.php) team researching the interactions between human land use decision-making, lake water quality, and the ecosystem services that lakes provide humans. As a Fulbright Fellow, she will be expected to serve as an ambassador for Ireland. In addition, since her Fellowship is funded by the Ireland EPA, she will want to network with analogous agencies in the U.S. (e.g., MI-DEQ and DNR, US EPA). I'm looking forward to working with her starting in January.

Welcome JF and Caroline, and congratulations on your respective awards!

Landscape limnology at the 2014 Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting

During May 2014, four leading aquatic scientific societies joined forces to co-host the  Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Portland, OR (http://sgmeet.com/jasm2014/):

• SOCIETY FOR FRESHWATER SCIENCE
• PHYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
• ASSOCIATION FOR THE SCIENCES OF LIMNOLOGY & OCEANOGRAPHY
• SOCIETY OF WETLAND SCIENTISTS

I am a long-time member of ASLO, and would normally have gone to this conference and presented at it. However, the thought of traveling ~12 hours and having a 8 hr time difference just two months before we move back to MI did not appeal. So, I sat this one out. But, my friends and colleagues rocked it!

CSI's lead-PI, Pat Soranno, gave a keynote address on Thursday titled Landscape limnology: Understanding freshwaters at regional to continental scales (http://sgmeet.com/jasm2014/keynote.asp). She spoke about the challenges and opportunities associated with data-intensive ecological research, and her talk inspired lots of questions, comments, and discussion. In addition, we have been using social media to help disseminate our research results (including this blog), and Pat's keynote hit Twitter - she got lots of tweets about the term "data-intensive research" being better than "big data" when describing ecological research like ours, about effective teams including diverse members with interpersonal skills, and about her argument for data sharing to promote a fully democratic environmental science. Nice!

Dr. Soranno's keynote kicked off a day of talks associated with her plenary. The special session was called Large-scale limnology – Integrating across landscapes to understand regional controls on biodiversity and nutrient cycles. CSI Limno (http://www.csilimnology.org/) team members gave five oral and one poster presentation as part of that session (http://www.sgmeet.com/jasm2014/sessionschedule.asp?SessionID=004):

• TAXONOMY OF CHANGE: USING CLUSTER ANALYSIS TO IDENTIFY TEMPORAL- PATTERNS IN LIMNOLOGICAL DATA by Noah Lottig and Pang-Ning Tan et al.
• PREDICTION AND PATTERNS OF LAKE DEPTH ACROSS A 17-STATE REGION IN THE U.S. by Samantha Oliver et al.
• LESSONS FROM LAGOS: THE TRIUMPHS AND CHALLENGES OF CREATING AN INTEGRATED MULTI-SCALED, MULTI-THEMED LAKE NUTRIENT GEODATABASE AT SUBCONTINENTAL SCALES by Sam Christel and Pat Soranno et al.
• MEASURING PATTERNS OF LAKE, STREAM, AND WETLAND CONNECTIVITY AT MACROSCALES by Emi Fergus et al.
• WHICH GLOBAL AND REGIONAL CLIMATE METRICS AT MACROSCALES BEST DESCRIBE LAKE WATER QUALITY RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE? by Caren Scott et al.
• SUBSIDY-STRESS EFFECTS OF NITROGEN ON PHYTOPLANKTON BIOMASS by Chris Filstrup et al.

Angela De Palma-Dow, my graduate student and a landscape limnology lab member, also gave a great talk on Wednesday in the Population and Community Ecology Session titled: THE ROLES OF HYDROLOGIC CONNECTIVITY AND LAKE AND LANDSCAPE CHARACTERISTICS IN SHAPING MACROPHYTE COMMUNITIES IN ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK INLAND LAKES. She also gave a poster about her work with the MI Citizen Monitoring Program, which is not part of her thesis, but is super cool: METHODS TO INCREASE PARTICIPATION IN AN INVASIVE AQUATIC PLANT MONITORING PROGRAM IN MICHIGAN, USA 

From all accounts, and despite Portland issuing a boil water alert during the conference, the JASM was a great success. I wish that I could have been there to share my current research and see all of my friends and colleagues!