Stephen Russell Carpenter | |
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| Alma mater | University of Wisconsin, Madison |
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| Thesis | Some environmental impacts of mechanical harvesting of nuisance submersed vascular plants (1979) |
Stephen Russell Carpenter (born July 5, 1952) is an American lake ecologist who focuses on lake eutrophication which is the over-enrichment of lake ecosystems leading to toxic blooms of micro-organisms and fish kills.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, [1] his father, Richard, a chemist, became the Director of the National Academies’ Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, so Carpenter was immersed in science at a young age. In his youth, Carpenter spent his summers on his grandfather's farm in Missouri. During this time he and his relatives enjoyed fishing, hunting and camping. “Hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting all come together in ecology,” he says. “I was really excited when I discovered there was a way to get paid for being a scientist outdoors.” [2]
His interest in ecology was sparked during his undergraduate program at Amherst College. After his sophomore year, Carpenter worked for the summer on a survey of tree cover in Glacier National Park. Carpenter performed undergraduate research in the Fort River of Massachusetts on the primary production of macrophytes under the instruction of Stuart Fisher, an aquatic ecosystem scientist. He received a B.A. in biology in 1974 [1] and then entered the graduate programs in Botany and Oceanography and Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he participated in the lab of Michael Adams to examine the role played by macrophytes in the phosphorus cycle of lake ecosystems. During his graduate years he met his wife, Susan Moths, whom he married in the same year he finished his doctoral dissertation, 1979. [2]
He began a teaching career at the University of Notre Dame [1] where he continued to work on lake research at the university's field station near Land O’ Lakes Wisconsin. Here he created a more broadly scoped study of lake ecosystems to include plants and animals and the food web. In 1982 he and Jim Kitchell began work on the trophic cascades Project, which involved the dynamics of the lake ecosystems. After 10 years spent at Notre Dame, he returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to a faculty position in the Center for Limnology and Department of Zoology. Madison had a strong limnology program allowing him to pursue other research including the accumulation of polychlorinated biphenyls in fish and invertebrates in Lake Michigan. He resumed work on the Madison lakes, including Lake Mendota, where his interest in the phosphorus cycle and eutrophication was renewed. His studies on the phosphorus cycle focused on nonpoint phosphorus pollution and how elevated phosphorus concentrations impacted the ecosystem of Lake Mendota. These investigations led Carpenter to devise strategies to manage the phosphorus cycle. By the mid-1990s he began to study the economics of eutrophication, in which he compared the benefits factories and farms receive by causing eutrophication to the benefits of keeping a lake clean and clear with the goal of maximizing the benefits on both sides. From 1999 to 2009 Carpenter led the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research at UW-Madison. In 2009 he became director of the UW-Madison Center for Limnology. In 2017 he retired as director in order to pursue research interests. [1]
Carpenter was on the Science Committee for the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society [3] and the board for the Stockholm Resilience Centre. [4] As of 2021, he is the co-editor in chief of the journal Ecosystems. [5] In 2000-2005 he was co-chair of the Scenarios Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He led the North Temperate Lakes research site of the Long Term Ecological Research Network program at the University of Wisconsin in 1999-2009. He is a former president of the Ecological Society of America. [6] As of 2011, Carpenter has published 5 books and about 450 scientific papers, book chapters, reviewed reports and commentaries.
Carpenter is the 2011 laureate of the Stockholm Water Prize for his research on how lake ecosystems are affected by their surrounding landscape and by human activities such as nutrient loading, fishing, and introductions of exotic species. [7] His other awards include a Pew Fellowship in Conservation and Environment, the Naumann-Thienemann medal of the International Society of Limnology in 2007 for "research that has built bridges between ecological theory, ecosystem experiments, and management of complex limnological problems" and the work that "has elucidated the importance of the trophic cascade and regime shifts in the management of lakes", [8] the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award in 1999 from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, [9] the Robert H. MacArthur Award in 2000 from the Ecological Society of America, [10] the Excellence in Ecology Prize (ECI Prize) in 2000 from the Ecology Institute for limnetic ecology, [11] and the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology in 2018 [12] from the Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2001, Carpenter was also awarded membership in the US National Academy of Sciences [13] and Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences [14] and 2006 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [15] In 2022 he was also awarded the Blue Planet Prize. [16]
Carpenter's research interest is in whole-ecosystem experiments and adaptive ecosystem management in freshwaters. Specific topics include: trophic cascades and their effects on production and nutrient cycling; contaminant cycles; freshwater fisheries; eutrophication; nonpoint pollution; ecological economics of freshwater; resilience of social-ecological systems; and early warnings of collapse in complex systems. "Eutrophication is a significant environmental problem that can impact humans on a recreational, economic, and even public health level,” says Carpenter, “and it's likely to intensify in the coming decades due to increases in human population, demand for more food, land conversion, and fertilizer use." [17]
An ecosystem is a system that environments and their organisms form through their interaction. The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Eutrophication is a general term describing a process in which nutrients accumulate in a body of water, resulting in an increased growth of microorganisms that may deplete the water of oxygen. Although eutrophication is a natural process, manmade or cultural eutrophication is far more common and is a rapid process caused by a variety of polluting inputs including poorly treated sewage, industrial wastewater, and fertilizer runoff. Such nutrient pollution usually causes algal blooms and bacterial growth, resulting in the depletion of dissolved oxygen in water and causing substantial environmental degradation.
Limnology is the study of inland aquatic ecosystems. The study of limnology includes aspects of the biological, chemical, physical, and geological characteristics of fresh and saline, natural and man-made bodies of water. This includes the study of lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, springs, streams, wetlands, and groundwater. Water systems are often categorized as either running (lotic) or standing (lentic).
Hydrobiology is the science of life and life processes in water. Much of modern hydrobiology can be viewed as a sub-discipline of ecology but the sphere of hydrobiology includes taxonomy, economic and industrial biology, morphology, and physiology. The one distinguishing aspect is that all fields relate to aquatic organisms. Most work is related to limnology and can be divided into lotic system ecology and lentic system ecology.
George Evelyn Hutchinson was a British ecologist sometimes described as the "father of modern ecology." He contributed for more than sixty years to the fields of limnology, systems ecology, radiation ecology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, a mathematical theory of population growth, art history, philosophy, religion, and anthropology. He worked on the passage of phosphorus through lakes, the chemistry and biology of lakes, the theory of interspecific competition, and on insect taxonomy and genetics, zoo-geography, and African water bugs. He is known as one of the first to combine ecology with mathematics. He became an international expert on lakes and wrote the four-volume Treatise on Limnology in 1957.
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
Ecological stoichiometry considers how the balance of energy and elements influences living systems. Similar to chemical stoichiometry, ecological stoichiometry is founded on constraints of mass balance as they apply to organisms and their interactions in ecosystems. Specifically, how does the balance of energy and elements affect and how is this balance affected by organisms and their interactions. Concepts of ecological stoichiometry have a long history in ecology with early references to the constraints of mass balance made by Liebig, Lotka, and Redfield. These earlier concepts have been extended to explicitly link the elemental physiology of organisms to their food web interactions and ecosystem function.
The phosphorus cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that involves the movement of phosphorus through the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Unlike many other biogeochemical cycles, the atmosphere does not play a significant role in the movement of phosphorus, because phosphorus and phosphorus-based materials do not enter the gaseous phase readily. The production of phosphine gas occurs in isolated and specific conditions. Therefore, the phosphorus cycle is primarily viewed through terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
The Trophic State Index (TSI) is a classification system designed to rate water bodies based on the amount of biological productivity they sustain. Although the term "trophic index" is commonly applied to lakes, any surface water body may be indexed.
Nutrient pollution, a form of water pollution, refers to contamination by excessive inputs of nutrients. It is a primary cause of eutrophication of surface waters, in which excess nutrients, usually nitrogen or phosphorus, stimulate algal growth. Sources of nutrient pollution include surface runoff from farm fields and pastures, discharges from septic tanks and feedlots, and emissions from combustion. Raw sewage is a large contributor to cultural eutrophication since sewage is high in nutrients. Releasing raw sewage into a large water body is referred to as sewage dumping, and still occurs all over the world. Excess reactive nitrogen compounds in the environment are associated with many large-scale environmental concerns. These include eutrophication of surface waters, harmful algal blooms, hypoxia, acid rain, nitrogen saturation in forests, and climate change.
David William Schindler,, was an American/Canadian limnologist. He held the Killam Memorial Chair and was Professor of Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. He was notable for "innovative large-scale experiments" on whole lakes at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) which proved that "phosphorus controls the eutrophication in temperate lakes leading to the banning of phosphates in detergents. He was also known for his research on acid rain. In 1989, Schindler moved from the ELA to continue his research at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, with studies into fresh water shortages and the effects of climate disruption on Canada's alpine and northern boreal ecosystems. Schindler's research had earned him numerous national and international awards, including the Gerhard Herzberg Gold Medal, the First Stockholm Water Prize (1991) the Volvo Environment Prize (1998), and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2006).
A planktivore is an aquatic organism that feeds on planktonic food, including zooplankton and phytoplankton. Planktivorous organisms encompass a range of some of the planet's smallest to largest multicellular animals in both the present day and in the past billion years; basking sharks and copepods are just two examples of giant and microscopic organisms that feed upon plankton. Planktivory can be an important mechanism of top-down control that contributes to trophic cascades in aquatic and marine systems. There is a tremendous diversity of feeding strategies and behaviors that planktivores utilize to capture prey. Some planktivores utilize tides and currents to migrate between estuaries and coastal waters; other aquatic planktivores reside in lakes or reservoirs where diverse assemblages of plankton are present, or migrate vertically in the water column searching for prey. Planktivore populations can impact the abundance and community composition of planktonic species through their predation pressure, and planktivore migrations facilitate nutrient transport between benthic and pelagic habitats.
Kinwamakwad Lake, also known as Long Lake, is a seepage at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center in Gogebic County, Michigan. The lake has been studied since the mid-1900s and used as an experimental lake for ecological studies.
Emily Stanley is an American professor of limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was named a 2018 Ecological Society of America Fellow and her research focuses on the ecology of freshwater ecosystems.
Maciej Gliwicz is a Polish biologist, evolutionist and professor at the University of Warsaw who specializes in the field of hydrobiology.
James Elser is an American ecologist and limnologist. He is Director & Bierman Professor of Ecology, Flathead Lake Biological Station, University of Montana and research professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. He is known for his work in ecological stoichiometry. In 2019, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Kathryn Linn Cottingham is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society in the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 2020 she will serve as editor-in-chief of the journal Ecology.
Paul and Peter are two connected lakes located in Michigan's upper peninsula near the Wisconsin border in Vilas County (WI) and Gogebic County (MI). Paul and Peter are kettle lakes, which is a type of lake formed by glaciers. Peter Lake is larger with an area of 6.24 acres and a maximum depth of 19.6 meters while Paul Lake has an area of 4.12 acres and a maximum depth of 15 meters. The lakes are a part of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center (UNDERC). The lakes, bogs, streams, and marshes of the UNDERC are located within deciduous and coniferous forests. The surrounding forest is made up mostly of sugar maple, yellow birch, and balsam fir. The two lakes are ideal for performing whole lake experiments since one lake can receive treatments while the other can remain a control. No fishing is allowed making the two connected lakes ideal for studying their fish populations. The lakes' basins are also located within the UNDERC meaning that no outside interference can occur. The lakes are dimictic, freezing in November and mixing in the fall and again partially mixing in the spring.
Lake 227 is one of 58 lakes located in the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in the Kenora District of Ontario, Canada. Lake 227 is one of only five lakes in the Experimental Lakes Area currently involved in long-term research projects, and is of particular note for its importance in long-term lake eutrophication studies. The relative absence of human activity and pollution makes Lake 227 ideal for limnological research, and the nature of the ELA makes it one of the few places in the world accessible for full lake experiments. At its deepest, Lake 227 is 10 meters (33 ft) deep, and the area of the lake is approximately 5 hectares. Funding and governmental permissions for access to Lake 227 have been unstable in recent years, as control of the ELA was handed off by the Canadian government to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).
David M. Post is a research scientist and academic administrator. He is currently a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and the Vice President ., Dean of Faculty, and Visiting Wong Ngit Liong Professor at Yale-NUS College, the first liberal arts college in Singapore. Post is an aquatic ecologist who studies food webs, evolution, and stable isotopes in lakes and rivers in Connecticut and Kenya.
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