Science Advisory Council
Lake Winnipeg Foundation Establishes Science Advisory Council (SAC)
January 11, 2012 – The Lake Winnipeg Foundation (LWF) today announced the establishment of a Science Advisory Council (SAC) to provide scientific guidance and advice to the LWF Board of Directors.
“As the interest in Lake Winnipeg’s health and well-being has grown, so too has the number of questions and inquiries we receive from our membership, the media, and the local, national and international community,” said LWF President Karin Boyd. “Because of the increasing complexity and volume of questions directed at the LWF, we felt the time was right to assemble a team of esteemed scientific research professionals to examine and provide advice to us on all matters related to the health of Lake Winnipeg and its watershed.”
Alexander G. Salki, SAC Chair
Research Biologist, formerly with DFO Freshwater Institute for 39 years. Alex joined the LWF Board of Directors in 2009. In addition to chairing this Council and coordinating the LWF Sensitive Habitat Inventory and Mapping (SHIM) Project, Alex is LWF Liaison to GNF Living Lakes Network and our Living Lakes Network Canada. His career research examined biological communities in hundreds of lakes throughout Canada, including the Laurentian Great Lakes, the Lake Winnipeg, Nelson and Churchill River system, and the Experimental Lakes Area. He served as Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium Science Program Coordinator (2002-2009), Science Co-chair of the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board (2003-2007), and was a member of the Joint Federal-Provincial Lake Winnipeg Basin Committee (2007-2009), and the Climate Change Connection Steering Committee (2003-2009). Alex continues to provide his zooplankton taxonomic expertise to universities, government agencies, and environmental consultants across North America.
Gregg J. Brunskill
Dr. Brunskill grew up in the dusty prairies of western South Dakota (USA), the son of a cattle rancher and a piano teacher. He used to be a good haystacker, and was moderately competent with horses and cattle. He got additional education at Augustana College (BA Music, Literature, Biology & Chemistry) and Cornell University (PhD in Biogeochemistry). Gregg worked for the Fisheries Research Board, Environment Canada, and Fisheries & Oceans Canada for 24 years, largely in Arctic estuaries and large rivers, on various aspects of geochemical and environmental change, and ecological sustainable development. He went to the Australian Institute of Marine Science in 1991, where he initiated a program of biogeochemical and sedimentation research using natural radioisotopes as tracers of time in the coastal regions of northern Australia. He worked on the NW Shelf and the North Queensland Great Barrier Reef Lagoon, as well as the coastal zone of Papua New Guinea. He retired in December 2006. He is married, with two sons, and lives in Alligator Creek where his current hobbies are parrot behavior, folk music, and tropical fruit tree horticulture. Email g.brunskill@aims.gov.au Address: 84 Alligator Creek Road, Alligator Creek, Queensland 4816 Australia
Brenda Hann
Dr. Hann, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba, teaches Limnology and Invertebrate Biology, and supervises graduate students who have carried out research projects on Lake Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods, and at Delta Marsh on Lake Manitoba. Her expertise includes the study of food web interactions in lakes and wetlands, more specifically, the study of invertebrates in the littoral zone of lakes and wetlands, and zooplankton and zoobenthos in large lakes. Brenda also uses paleolimnology to examine animal microfossils preserved in the sediments of lakes over past centuries. Her recent studies have also included tracking the invasion history of zooplankters such as the spiny water flea, and fish like rainbow smelt, into Lake Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods.
Robert Hecky
Bob is currently McKnight Endowed Presidential Professor of Lake Ecology at the University of Minnesota Duluth and also serves on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission as a Canadian Commissioner. From 1973 to 1996 he was a scientist at the Freshwater Institute of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Winnipeg and from 1996 to 2007 he was United Nations University Chair for African Great Lakes and Rivers at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. While at the Freshwater Institute he was project leader for the Fisheries-Limnology component of the Lake Winnipeg, Churchill and Nelson Rivers Study from 1974 to 1976, environmental impacts of northern river impoundment and diversion (1976 to 1985), impacts of oil and gas development in the MacKenzie Delta (1985-1987), the Northwestern Ontario Lake Size Study (1987-1989) and the Experimental Lakes Area (1989-1995). In 2008 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Ray Hesslein
After doing his graduate work at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) as a student at Columbia University in New York, Ray emigrated to Winnipeg in 1976. Most of his work has been with the ELA, but he also worked in the Mackenzie River Delta, on northern Alberta Rivers, Hudson Bay, and Lake Winnipeg and its inflowing and out flowing rivers.
Dr. Hesslein was a Research Scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) until 2009. During his career he worked on a variety of issues involving the biogeochemistry of fresh waters. His topics of research included nutrients, trace metals, acid rain, radioisotopes, stable isotopes, and greenhouse gases. A large part of his efforts involved dynamic modeling of physics, chemistry and biology in lakes and rivers. Since his retirement in 2009, Ray has contributed valuable feedback to the Lake Winnipeg Foundation as a scientific advisor. His goal is to encourage public understanding of the natural forces influencing nutrient loading to Lake Winnipeg, how it is happening, and suggesting ideas about what can be done.
Nancy Loadman
Nancy is an Instructor in the Biology Department at the Richardson College for the Environment, University of Winnipeg. Ms. Loadman currently teaches undergraduate courses in ecology and vertebrate zoology and has taught courses in aquatic sciences such as wetland ecology and limnology. She has been involved in research on the zooplankton communities of prairie lakes, freshwater aquaculture and is currently collaborating on research into multiple stressors affecting populations of Daphnia magna. Ms. Loadman has served on the Education committee of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation and has participated in the education program of the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium. She is an avid summer cottager on Lake Winnipeg and enjoys dinghy sailing and kayaking.
Lyle Lockhart
Dr. Lockhart hails from south of London, southern Ontario. He obtained his doctorate from University of Western Ontario, Biochemistry, in 1971. As a Research Scientist, Freshwater Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada from 1971 to his retirement in 2001, his scientific interests included environmental dynamics and biological effects of trace chemicals (pesticides, hydrocarbons, mercury) particularly in the far North (uptake, metabolism and excretion of chemical pollutants by aquatic organisms, accumulation of chemicals in body organs, effects of toxicants on body enzyme systems, acute and chronic toxicology of pesticides, oils and hydrocarbons, effects of oils on the quality of fishery products (tainting), lake sediments as archives of environmental history. Dr. Lockhart is an Adjunct Professor, University of Manitoba, Department of Entomology, and Department of Zoology. Post-retirement, he spends time consulting on issues of chemical contaminants in the North, volunteers with several organizations, notably Shalom Residences, the Lake Winnipeg Foundation, Creative Retirement Manitoba and the 55-plus Continuing Education Department at UWinnipeg. Lyle’s hobbies include digital photography, woodworking, cottage carpentry in Ponemah, and family history.
Greg McCullough
Dr. McCullough received his PhD. from the University of Manitoba in 2006 for his study of circulation of, and sediment transport in river water after it flows into Lake Malawi, SE Africa. Prior to his return to academia, he was employed by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans for 19 years in the study of sediment and nutrient transport in the rivers and lakes associated with hydroelectric development of the Churchill and Nelson rivers, and watershed hydrology and nutrient transport at the Experimental Lakes Area in NW Ontario. In the course of research on Lake Winnipeg over the last decade, he has developed remote sensing tools for monitoring plankton biomass in Lake Winnipeg, including the capability to distinguish and monitor cyanobacteria. He is the lead author of a recent journal article about the effects of climate and flooding on Lake Winnipeg.
Catherine Salki
An Ottawa Valley import, Catherine is a graduate of UWinnipeg and UManitoba, where she completed graduate work in Entomology on ant-aphid mutualism in Manitoba; she later studied colonization of newly-flooded moss habitats at South Indian Lake with the guidance of Dr. David Rosenberg and his associates at DFO. Catherine will tell you that, with the exception of parenting, her ten years of teaching at Windsor Park Collegiate were the most gratifying of her career endeavours. Since joining the LWF Board of Directors in 2009, she has become an active participant in LWF administration, coordinates the annual Grindstone Walk For Water, and continues to provide educational and environmental advice to schools and organizations such as Manitoba Envirothon.
Michael Stainton
Mr. Stainton is a chemist with the DFO’s Freshwater Institute since 1968. Most of his career has been spent working with Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) research team http://www.experimentallakesarea.ca where his lab has been responsible for the aquatic chemistry component of ELA’s whole-ecosystem research and monitoring program.
Mr. Stainton has a long standing interest in Lake Winnipeg research, which began in 1969 with his work on board the CGS Bradbury during a series of DFO led research cruises. Unlike the Bradbury (now in the Selkirk Marine Museum) Mike continues his Lake Winnipeg research activities aboard the Namao, participating in annual science cruises.
Mike’s current Lake Winnipeg research interests range from studying the impact of flooding and land use practice on nutrient loss from agricultural lands, to monitoring the algal productivity that these nutrients produce in Lake Winnipeg, using remote sensing and shipboard instrumentation.
Hank Venema
is Director of the Sustainable Natural Resources Management Program and of the Water Innovation Centre, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is a professional engineer with a diverse natural resource background spanning water resources, agriculture, energy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, rural development, ecosystem management, environmental economics and environmental finance.
Since 2004, Dr. Venema has led IISD’s research on water and agricultural issues in pioneering the application of Natural Capital principles to water management challenges in Western Canada. In 2009, he spearheaded the creation of IISD’s Water Innovation Centre, with a mandate to build a strategic vision for Lake Winnipeg Basin management based on leading-edge policy, management and technological concepts.
Internationally, Dr. Venema has collaborated with the UN Environment Programme, the Global Water Systems Project, Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Development Research Centre, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the Canadian International Development Agency. In Canada, he has worked with the federal Departments of the Environment, Agriculture, and Natural Resources, and within Manitoba for the Provincial Departments of Water Stewardship and Conservation.
Harold Welch
Dr. Welch is a Research Scientist, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (retired).
He conducted research on most aspects of freshwater and marine ecology in the Canadian Arctic.