Professional summary
Ellie is a freshwater ecologist with expertise in physical, chemical and biological interactions in lake ecosystems. Her research interests include understanding the causes and consequences of environmental change in lakes.
She is interested in both short-term dynamics and long-term patterns of change in lakes which impact water quality and biodiversity, working with long-term monitoring and high frequency sensor data as part of the Cumbrian Lakes Monitoring Platform and other projects.
Ellie's work seeks to understand the physical and chemical — including nutrients — drivers of change in algal communities, including the role of organic nutrients, phenological change and wider landscape catchment influences. This includes the use of sensor-based monitoring and catchment modelling to investigate the patterns and drivers of dissolved organic carbon and turbidity across streams. More recent work focuses on the role of nutrients in changing the functional properties of microbial communities and the impact this has on lake functions such as greenhouse gas emissions. Other research interests include how lake and reservoir ecosystems respond to management and restoration activities, including building the evidence base for lake restoration approaches and understanding recovery trajectories from historic nutrient enrichment of lakes.