Professional summary

Steve is the leader of the Lake Ecosystems Group within UKCEH, and currently coordinates long-term and high frequency monitoring of lakes in the English Lake District. His own research interests revolve around the impacts of environmental change on freshwater ecosystems, including the impacts of climate change and pollution on freshwater species and communities. He has a particular interest in the ecology of plankton populations.

In 2022, Steve became Co-Chair of the Aquatic Ecology Special Interest Group of the British Ecological Society. He is a Subject Editor for Global Change Biology, handling manuscripts addressing diverse aspects of environmental change in freshwater ecosystems, and also a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Plankton Research.

Selected publications

Chang Chun-Wei et al. , (2022), Causal networks of phytoplankton diversity and biomass are modulated by environmental context. Nature Communications, 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28761-3

O'Brien Duncan A. et al. , (2022), Planktonic functional diversity changes in synchrony with lake ecosystem state. Global Change Biology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16485

Thorpe Amy C. et al. , (2022), Sedimentary DNA records long-term changes in a lake bacterial community in response to varying nutrient availability. Environmental DNA, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/edn3.344

Armstrong Alona et al. , (2020), Integrating environmental understanding into freshwater floatovoltaic deployment using an effects hierarchy and decision trees. Environmental Research Letters, 15, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abbf7b

Samplonius Jelmer M. et al. , (2021), Strengthening the evidence base for temperature-mediated phenological asynchrony and its impacts. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5, 155-164, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01357-0

Doubek Jonathan P. et al. , (2021), The extent and variability of storm‐induced temperature changes in lakes measured with long‐term and high‐frequency data. Limnology and Oceanography, 66, 1979-1992, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/lno.11739

Thackeray Stephen J. et al. , (2020), The case for research integration, from genomics to remote sensing, to understand biodiversity change and functional dynamics in the world’s lakes. Global Change Biology, 26, 3230-3240, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15045

Maberly Stephen C. et al. , (2020), Global lake thermal regions shift under climate change. Nature Communications, 11, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15108-z

Stockwell Jason D. et al. , (2020), Storm impacts on phytoplankton community dynamics in lakes. Global Change Biology, 26, 2756-2784, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15033

Thackeray Stephen J. et al. , (2016), Phenological sensitivity to climate across taxa and trophic levels. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18608