Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are becoming an increasingly serious problem in lakes worldwide, driven largely by nutrient runoff from agriculture and urban development. A new study co-authored by our director, Dr. Kevin McCann, delves into how one particular neurotoxin and its related compounds move through the food web in Lake Erie.
Read MoreThe NSERC Food Web Alliance is a recently-funded project designed to tackle a major challenge in Canada and beyond: understanding and mitigating the combined impacts of multiple stressors—such as nutrient loading, harvesting, climate change, and invasive species—on the sustainability of Great Lakes fisheries and their food webs.
Read MoreA new Ecology Letters article authored in part by our own Dr. Joey Bernhardt tackles a challenge that is becoming central to how we understand the effects of climate change on ecosystems: the disconnect between environmental conditions and the biological communities that live in them.
Read MoreStaff from the Quantitative Fisheries Center and Centre for Ecosystem Management recently came together for their annual meeting set against the lush green backdrop of the Arboretum Centre (University of Guelph).
Read MoreWhen we talk about climate change, we often think in extremes—heat waves, vanishing glaciers, and species on the brink. But nature’s responses to these shifts are far more nuanced, and according to a new paper co-authored by the Centre for Ecosystem Management’s Dr. Joey Bernhardt, understanding when ecosystems respond may be just as important as understanding how they respond.
Read MoreYou don’t always need massive datasets to learn something important about nature. While modern ecology often focuses on large-scale “big data,” a recent study carried out, in part, by one of our collaborators Dr. Robert Hanner shows that smaller, less-than-perfect datasets can still reveal important patterns—if analyzed carefully.
Read MoreThe Modelling Food Web Resilience in the Great Lakes working group recently met at the Centre for Ecosystem Management to focus on discussions around resilience, governance, and modelling in ecosystem management.
Read MoreIn a study led by Mx. Jade Dawson (and co-authored in part by our own Dr. Kevin McCann), we delve into the intricate world of freshwater food webs to uncover the resilience of Canadian fisheries in the face of environmental challenges.
Read MoreUnder what conditions can trophic diversity relationships be eroded? Our Scale Invariance in Aquatic Ecosystems working group seeks to answer that very question as we study patterns in trophic diversity relationships within aquatic ecosystems where species turnover is often significant.
Read MoreOur Structural Early Warning Signals in Aquatic Ecosystems working group is investigating how the basic connections between the organization and operation of ecosystems (such as the arrangement of different life stages and the structure of food webs) can be disrupted by global changes.
Read MoreBy measuring the variables of population growth rate and competitive ability (i.e. how well a species can use limited resources), the authors - including the CEM’s Dr. Joey Bernhardt - investigated the effects of climate warming on the competition amongst four species of phytoplankton under limiting nitrate.
Read MoreOur planet faces a growing need for watershed restoration. Human activities like wastewater production, fossil fuel emissions, deforestation, and intensive agriculture have disrupted the delicate balance of nutrient flows between land and water.
Read MoreHow do cold-blooded creatures adapt to climate change? A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution uncovers the surprising role of temperature and competition in shaping their habitats.
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