Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Dr. Wiersma conducts field-based research in the boreal forest. She is interested in understanding the habitat requirements for a variety of species, including coyotes, caribou, and a rare lichen. She is currently investigating the effects of coyote predation on caribou population dynamics in central Newfoundland. She is also examining predator and prey relationships across wide spatial scales and modelling habitat use patterns of both caribou and coyotes. In addition, she is conducting research on the rare Boreal Felt lichen to understand its particular habitat requirements within forest stands and across the island as a whole. Dr. Purchase conducts field based research on fish, with a focus on life history variation within species. He is examining how environmental variation affects individual life history traits, local adaptation of populations to such conditions, and how this within-species biodiversity affects productivity and resilience. He is conducting field work on several salmonid species around the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland and is about to begin work on coastal marine species across the island. Dr. Ziegler conducts field-based research aimed at understanding the factors regulating carbon cycling in boreal watersheds. River and stream ecosystems are key locations for the processing of elements and dissolved organic matter, an ecologically important energy and regionally and globally important carbon and nutrient reservoir. She is currently working in collaboration with Wiersma to assess how landscape attributes within a large boreal watershed in NL influence microbial activity and the carbon they mediate. These investigations will provide predictive knowledge of how environmental/climatic change may regulate biogeochemical cycling in freshwater boreal ecosystems.