Fri, February 7, 2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORATORY (AERL). IOF Seminar Series
Speaker: Kyra St-Pierre
Postdoctoral Fellow, Pelagic Ecosystems Lab
Climate change is occurring more dramatically across northern regions than anywhere else on the planet. Warming and wetting are leading to increased glacial melt, permafrost thaw, and lengthened growing season, already resulting in transformative changes to the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems. But the impact of these changes may extend much further, beyond the coastlines that delineate the boundary between land and sea. The land-to-ocean aquatic continuum concept acknowledges that changes on land have important consequences for the quality and function of coastal waters, linked by rivers and streams that integrate changes happening across the watersheds that they drain. Using case studies from watersheds in the Canadian Arctic and the Central Coast of British Columbia, we will show the impact of wide scale landscape processes to the transport and processing of key nutrients and pollutants, highlighting the potential consequences of such changes on the quality and function of coastal waters.
Location: AERL Theatre