Update for World Fisheries Day 2016: Summary of the multiple stressors of DROUGHT, and POLLUTION, from the Fisheries Blog
September 2016- FOCA’s science partners have been working on a program to build a geospatial database for assessing effects of multiple stressors on inland lakes. Click the image to access a poster describing the project!
The database is being used to create interpolated provincial maps of average total phosphorus data from the Lake Partner Program (LPP), a citizen science program of water sampling undertaken by FOCA’s volunteer lake stewards and administered by the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC).
This project is intended to aid multi-scale examinations of watersheds, to facilitate analysis of lake ecosystem characteristics, and to provide researchers and policy makers with insight about the stressors affecting inland lake water quality.
Pictured at the partners meeting in September 2016 (l to r): Nigel Lester (Emeritus Research Scientist, OMNRF), Anne DeSellas (Inland Lakes Monitoring Scientist, MOECC), James Rusak (Scientist, MOECC), Cindy Chu (Research Scientist, OMNRF), Andrew Paterson (Inland Lakes Research Scientist, OMNRF), Terry Rees (Executive Director, FOCA), Stephanie J. Melles (Assistant Professor, Spatial Ecology, Ryerson University), Shoikot Iftekhar (PhD student in Molecular Science, Ryerson University)
June 2016 – In collaboration with our science partners at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (OMNRF), FOCA is working with the Melles Lab in the Department of Chemistry and Biology at Ryerson University on a pilot project to develop land-based predictors of multiple stressors for Ontario’s inland lakes.
We hope that this geospatial database will ultimately provide FOCA members with a way to visualize and assess their lake’s water quality in relation to other lakes in the Province.
This project is being supported in part through Mitacs, a national, non-for-profit organization that works with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from over 50 universities to apply their specialized expertise to applied research challenges.
Pictured in the FOCA office in June 2016: Shoikot Iftekhar (PhD student, Molecular Science) and Dr. Stephanie Melles of Ryerson University.