The health of our planet’s lakes is central to environmental, economic, and cultural wellbeing. However, lakes are under increasing threat from multiple stressors including land-use change, nutrient and sediment run-off, non-native species, and climate change. Aotearoa-New Zealand has an estimated 3,800 lakes greater than 1 hectare in area, yet researchers cannot robustly assess their health because over 95 per cent of these lakes are not monitored.
Even for the few lakes that are monitored for biodiversity, datasets are short and assessment incomplete because monitoring started after those lakes had deteriorated. Lake sediments are natural archives that continuously record environmental history, providing current and historical aquatic communities and water quality measures - equivalent to many centuries of environmental monitoring. The ‘Our lakes’ health; past, present, future project is sampling water, surface sediment, and sediment cores from over 300 lakes nationwide. In her webinar, Susie will demonstrate how her team uses DNA barcoding and metabarcoding to determine lakes’ current and historic health and biodiversity in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
ABOUT SUSIE WOOD
Susie Wood is a Senior Scientist at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, New Zealand. She obtained her Ph.D. from Victoria University (Wellington, NZ) in 2006, specializing in cyanobacterial blooms and toxins. Susie leads and contributes to multiple research programs, supervises students, and regularly undertakes consulting projects for government departments and regional authorities on topics related to cyanobacteria, water quality, molecular ecology, and biomonitoring. She has been active in advocating for incorporating molecular tools in biomonitoring and biodiversity projects, including the development of novel molecular-based indices. She co-leads the Lakes380 project using paleoenvironmental reconstructions and molecular techniques for analysis.
1 май 2022
