Key capabilities
Our key capabilities in freshwater science include: monitoring and managing river health; monitoring and managing lake reservoir ecosystems; and mapping and managing invasive species.
Freshwater ecosystems provide us with many valuable services. They purify our drinking water, supply irrigation for agriculture, recycle nutrients, help reduce the severity of floods and droughts, and support fisheries and recreation. They face many threats, including pollution, climate change, habitat loss, drainage, invasive species, dam construction and over abstraction of water.
We specialise in understanding the impacts of multiple environmental stressors on freshwater plant, vertebrate, invertebrate and microbial communities. We identify thresholds in nutrient concentrations in rivers that are required to observe improvements in ecological status; and we conduct research into how lakes function and respond to environmental stressors such as climate change, nutrient enrichment and air pollution.
