Aquatic and Marine Ecology Research

Multifractal Analysis Spectral Analysis Nearest Neighbour Ecological Modeling Estuarine Ecology Aquatic Biomonitoring Lab Denizens Back to WC's Research Plankton Net

Currie Lab Aquatic and Marine Ecology Research Page Physical and biological processes in lakes, estuaries, and the ocean. The research undertaken in this lab stems primarily from the investigation of pattern and scale in aquatic ecosystems. How do physical processes, like mixing and turbulence, currents and circulation, irradience or energy transfer, affect the biological processes in planktonic ecosystems? How can we account for scale-dependancy in field measurements when attempting to apply those results to larger or smaller scales? How do we account for the patchiness found commonly in nature? Our investigations address these questions directly with field measurements, the utilization of remote sensing, and the construction of mathematical and numerical models. Systems of interest include lakes and streams (limnological), oceanic (marine) and estuarine (mixed). Our research focuses on the analysis of impacted watersheds from point and non-point sources of stressors. These include acid-mine drainage (pH), agricultural run-off (nutrient loading), erosion (turbity), dams (variation in flow) and weather/climate (rainfall, temperature) etc. Collection of continuous measurments in time and space: biological: optical plankton counting, acoustics, chl-a fluorometry    • plankton, stream invertebrates, macroalgae, vertebrates environmental: salinity, conductivity, oxygen, tubidity, pH, light remote sensing: satellite data (SeaWiFs, RadarSat, Topex-Poseidon), LiDAR, moorings Time series analysis of continuous data: spectral analysis multifractal analysis co-variance Ecological Modeling: simple box-models biological-physically coupled hydrodynamic models flow and response models