The lab

Research in my lab relates to environmental change and how aquatic ecosystems respond to it over the long temporal perspective afforded by lake sediment records. I’m particularly interested in abrupt environmental change and using palaeo records to examine, test, and understand theories regarding critical transitions and their so-called early warning indicators. Another area of particular interest is in macroecological patterns and how these evolve over time and how they change in response to environmental perturbation.

Other research interests include

• nitrogen pollution of remote oligotrophic lakes, and
• recovery of lakes from acidification and eutrophication.

My research involves a strong quantitative theme and I am keen to see how and where modern statistical methods can be applied to palaeoenvironmental time series to enable us to answer pressing ecological and environmental questions. Often this involves making allowances within the methods for the features of sediment records such as irregular sampling, dating error, and compaction of sediments.

My lab is based within the Institute of Environmental Change & Society at the University of Regina.