Ontario Lakes Workshop IV - December 8, 2017, Toronto
The purpose of this workshop was to present ABATE program objectives and outcomes, develop future plans for the training program, discuss government partner priorities and collaborations, and discuss "cross-fertilization" of ideas, projects, and proposals. There was also a focus on gaining professional skills training, with a large component of the workshop consisting of a student mentoring panel of government, industry, and academic representatives who spoke about their personal experiences and provided tips for getting jobs in their various industries.
Ontario lakes workshop III- april 10th, 2017, Toronto
Building on the discussions from previous workshops held last year. In this third workshop we invited participants to share thoughts and ideas on several fronts including (1) On-going or proposed research activities of the NSERC CREATE trainees, collaborators, and co-applicants (2) opportunities to interact/collaborate with our government collaborators and partners (placements etc.,) and (3) Development and participation in value-added professional skills training for trainees including an “Emerging Issues Webinar Series.”
ONtario lakes Workshop II- November 13th,2015, Toronto
“Come Here, Come Yonder.” We were pleased to invite members to our second Ontario Lakes Workshop, building on the discussions from the first workshop, held in June of 2015. In the second workshop we shared thoughts, ideas and findings on several fronts: (1) Building stronger links with the established research programs in OMOEEC and OMNRF; (2) Presenting a 30-year time series for 6000 lakes, illustrating tends in biomass changes with regards to natural cycles, anthropogenic trends, and anomalies that may be indicators of a pending regime shift; (3) Building an understanding of food webs into lake surveys from the “bottom-up”, focusing on the role of phytoplankton biomass, species, stoichiometry and essential fatty acid composition; and (4) Sharing ideas with a visiting Swedish scientist (Ann-Kristen Bergstrom, Umea University), which whom we are working on similar food web ideas along a climate gradient of lakes ranging from hyper-oligotrophic to hyper-eutrophic that spans the sub-Arctic in Sweden to the Adirondacks in New York. We shared ideas, planned for resource sharing, and the next field season, and discuss ideas for a possible NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant.
ONtario Lakes workshop I-June 10th, 2015, london
The purpose of this time-sensitive workshop, with the focus of building bridges between western and government agencies working on lakes, was to: (1) Present ongoing and pending academic research activities for this summer (funded), and for next 4 years, including building on the broad-scale monitoring program of the OMNR as well as ongoing lake sampling in the far north; (2) Present a plan to operationalize sampling of surface waters for phytoplankton/zooplankton and microplastics (working in collaboration with OMOECC and Fluid Imaging) (3) Present a plan to conduct Chemostat, Ecostat and manipulative experiments to test drivers of algal blooms (and toxic algal blooms) this summer (4) Present proposal ideas for an international initiative to study global drivers influencing food webs (involving Sweden, Canada and potentially USA) (5) Discuss how to leverage resources to optimize science outcomes this summer, and over the next 4 years.