Interests: Assessment of anthropogenic impacts on the functional ecology of freshwater ecosystems, in particular, lakes and wetlands of the Great Lakes basin.

I study the impact of human activities on the ecological health of aquatic ecosystems, especially coastal wetlands and tributaries of the Laurentian Great Lakes. We have developed biological indicators using organisms from various trophic levels (e.g. periphyton, zooplankton, macro-invertebrates, aquatic macrophytes and fish) as well as environmental parameters (e.g. wetland basin morphology, water quality, sediment quality) to assess the ecological status of over 150 coastal wetlands throughout the U.S. and Canadian shoreline of the Great Lakes. A Great Lakes (Geographic Information System) GIS database has also been created to determine the impact of land-use alterations and shoreline development on wetland quality.