March 3, 2023
Phenological Whiplash: lake response to highly variable ice and snow conditions
Dr. Gretchen Gerrish
University of Wisconsin Center for Limnology
Abstract
Climate change is leading to shifts in snowpack, ice thickness, the average timing of phenological events and also their variance and predictability. Increasing phenological variability creates a stochastic environment that is critically understudied, particularly in aquatic ecosystems. I will provide a perspective on the possible implications for increasingly unpredictable aquatic habitats, including more frequent trophic asynchronies and altered hydrologic regimes, focusing on ice-off phenology and variable snow and ice conditions in lakes.
Biosketch
Gerrish is an evolutionary ecologist who became the Director of UW Madison's Trout Lake Station in 2019. Her research focuses on how aquatic organisms adapt to changing ecological conditions. Her work involves reconstructing land-use change and food web changes over time. She also studies how solar and lunar light affects feeding and reproductive behavior in zooplankton. Gerrish earned a master's from University of Illinois-Champaign in natural resources and environmental sciences and a Doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University. Before joining Trout Lake Station she was a tenured professor at UW-La Crosse.