CONFERENCE PROGRAM - ASLO

Meeting Program
PLENARY LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS
To promote cross-disciplinary dialogs on issues of global importance, this
meeting introduces a new format where duo speakers present on some
days with complementary expertise to address the issues, covering both
the natural science aspects and socio-economic aspects. Additionally, the
meeting will begin on Sunday afternoon with a opening plenary session.
Local aspects will be covered during plenary sessions on Monday and
Wednesday from 12:00 to 13:30.
SUNDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2013 – OPENING SESSION
DR. JOHN DOWNING
ASLO President, Regent’s Excellence Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and
Organismal Biology and Chair of the Environmental Science Graduate
Program, Iowa State University
Presentation: ASLO President John Downing will provide opening
remarks for the conference.
Biographical Information: John Downing is president of the Association
for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, a Board
member of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, and a member
of the Consortium of Aquatic Science Societies. He is a Regent’s Excellence
Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, and
the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa
State University. He is Chair of the Environmental Science Graduate
Program. He is also an adjunct professor at Itasca Community
College where he is helping create a water quality technology program
to provide employment opportunities to students in an economically
depressed region. His research interests include limnology, aquatic
ecology, terrestrial ecology, microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, population
conservation, and whole ecosystem restoration and management.
He has advised many policy-makers and citizens groups concerning
water quality management, and is a frequent consultant to firms and
boards regionally, nationally, and internationally. He was recently
awarded ASLO’s Ruth Patrick award for his work in understanding
and mitigating eutrophication in agricultural regions. He was formerly
a professor at McGill University and the University of Montreal where
he was Director of the Laurentian Biological Station.
RICHARD CAMPANELLA
Geographer and Senior Professor of Practice, Tulane School of Architecture,
Tulane University
Presentation: New Orleans: A Historical Geography, 1700s-2000s
This illustrated presentation will explain the formation of the Mississippi
Delta and the settlement and early development of New Orleans with
respect to its deltaic environment throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. It will then describe, through time-sequence maps and
graphs, the environmental manipulations of the “long twentieth century”
and the ensuing geophysical deterioration of the delta, the population
loss and urban decline of New Orleans, and the circumstances that led
to the Katrina debacle. We will conclude with a synopsis of the progress
made since 2005, and the path ahead.
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ASLO
Biographical Information: Richard Campanella, a geographer with the
Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of six critically acclaimed
books on New Orleans, including Bienville’s Dilemma and Geographies
of New Orleans. The only two-time winner of the Louisiana
Endowment for the Humanities “Book of the Year” Award,
Campanella has also received the Williams Prize for Louisiana
History, the Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Teaching from
Tulane University, and the Monroe Fellowship from the Tulane
University New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. Some of his
work may be viewed at http://richcampanella.com.
MONDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2013 – MORNING PLENARY SESSION
DR. KAREN KIDD
Canada Research Chair and Professor of Biology, University of New Brunswick
Presentation: Is the Birth Control Pill an Effective Form of Contraception
for Wild Fish?
It is well known that sewage effluents contain substances that affect the
endocrine system and reproduction of wild fish. However, it is not well
understood whether the responses observed at the organism level, such
as feminization of male fish living downstream, can be linked to impacts
at the population level. To investigate this, a whole lake experiment was
done at the Experimental Lakes Area in northwestern Ontario, Canada
from 1999-2010 and examined the effects of the synthetic estrogen ethynylestradiol
(EE2) used in birth control pills on the fish populations and
their supporting food web. Continuous additions of EE2 (5-6 ng/L)
were made to the lake in the summers of 2001-2003; biochemical- and
tissue-level endpoints were examined in several species of fish and
population data were collected for all trophic levels before, during and
after EE2 additions and contrasted to reference lake data. The experiment
was successful at reproducing the impacts observed downstream
of wastewater discharges. Male fish from the treated lake produced high
concentrations of vitellogenin (an egg yolk protein precursor) and had
delayed spermatocyte development. In addition, in the second and third
summer of additions, reproductive failures occurred for the shortestlived
fish species, the fathead minnow, with a subsequent collapse in
the population. Ongoing monitoring of the lake after EE2 additions
stopped showed that the fathead minnow population has recovered.
Continuous inputs of low levels of the estrogen used in birth control
pills can impact the sustainability of fish populations.
Biographical Information: Karen Kidd has been a Canada Research
Chair and Professor of Biology at the University of New Brunswick,
Canada since 2004. Before this, she worked for 6 years as a research
scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She received her B.Sc. in
Environmental Toxicology from the University of Guelph and a Ph.D.
in Environmental Biology and Ecology from the University of Alberta.
Karen’s research focuses on understanding the effects of municipal and
industrial effluents, aquaculture and agricultural runoff on fish and
invertebrate populations and food web structure of lakes, wetlands and
rivers, and the factors affecting the accumulation of persistent contaminants
such as chlorinated pesticides and mercury through freshwater
communities in tropical through arctic systems. She led a whole lake
experiment at the Experimental Lakes Area in northwestern Ontario,
Canada to understand the effects of the estrogen used in birth control
pills and released in municipal wastewaters on fish populations and their
supporting food web.