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Keynote speakers 

John Doherty (Australia)

Presentation topic:
Environmental modeling - encapsulating what we known and
quantifying what we don't"

Dr. John Doherty works primarily for himself as a private consultant. He also works in a part-time capacity for the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training at Flinders University Australia. There is a considerable overlap between his research and consulting interests. These are focused mainly on the following topics, all of which attempt to serve the greater purpose of maximizing the use environmental modeling in the decision-making context:

  • Solution of the inverse problem of model calibration in ways that are numerically efficient but that allow maximum usage of both field data and expert knowledge;

  • Quantification of the uncertainty associated with model predictions of management interest;

  • Development of a theoretical understanding of the benefits and costs of simplicity vs. complexity in environmental models;

  • Appropriate use of models in the environmental decision-making process.
     

Aaron Packman (USA)

Presentation topic:
Overview of surface-groundwater interactions in the context of
river degradation, water quality, and ecosystem processes

Dr. Aaron Packman is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Northwestern University.  His research focuses on environmental and microbial transport processes, with particular emphasis on understanding the basic processes that control interfacial transport in aquatic systems and the coupling of physical transport processes with biological and biogeochemical processes in dynamic natural environments such as rivers. Dr. Packman’s work is highly collaborative and encompasses basic fluid mechanics, particle transport and morphodynamics, microbiology, and aquatic and surface chemistry.  Important applications include contaminant transport and water quality, microbial habitat conditions and benthic microbial ecology, nutrient and carbon cycling, ecosystem degradation and restoration, control of biofilm-based infections, and the transmission of waterborne disease.

Dr. Packman has received several awards for his work, including Career awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and the Huber Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers.  He is currently an associate editor for the leading aquatic sciences journal Limnology and Oceanography – Fluids and Environments, and is the Vice-President of the International Association for Sediment Water Science.  He is also very active on technical committees and panels addressing sediment contamination, hydrologic synthesis, and waterborne disease transmission.
 

Per Gustav Stålnacke (Norway)

Presentation topic:
How slow can it be? Spatial and temporal considerations on
nutrient retention from source to river mouth

Dr. Per Stålnacke is the head of the department of 'Water quality and hydrology' at Bioforsk Soil and environment in Norway and also vice-president of the IAHS ICWQ. His research interest is on integrated water resources management and the policy-science interface. Besides, he has considerable experiences in assessments of nutrient fluxes at a river basin scale. There is, according to him, a huge research need to better quantify the hydrological pathways and development of better tools to assess and improve the understanding of how long it can take before we can observe improved water quality due to implemented mitigation measures. These are the apparent needs in relation to the WFD and the HELCOM BSAP. Stålnacke will in his presentation show and discuss some very recent results on nutrient retention in the Baltic Sea drainage area and time trends in selected rivers in Baltic Sea and Europe.

 

Nikolai Friberg (Denmark)

Presentation topic:
Restoring stream ecosystems in a changing climate

Dr. Nikolai Friberg is Deputy Head of the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University. He has more than 20 years research experience with in the field of freshwater ecology from working both in Denmark and abroad. His main focus of research has been on applied issues and how anthropogenic disturbance impact freshwater communities. His science has evolved around community ecology and centered on three overall themes:

*    The influence of habitats and anthropogenic stressors (organic pollution, pesticides etc.) on stream biota and  ecosystem processes; 

*     Influence of riparian areas and catchment land use on stream communities and biological structure, including effects of restoration measures;

*     Effects on climate change on stream ecosystem structure and functioning including food web architecture;

His main research interest recently relates to the interaction among organisms across levels of organization and how this will influence ecosystem processes, including recently how food webs change in relation to climate. Currently he is involved as work package leader in a new EU FP 7 project, REFORM, on detecting habitat degradation and developing evidence based ways of restoring rivers.  His is currently the president of NORBS (Nordic Benthological Society) and the Danish representative in CHIN and Euraqua.

 

Cintia Bertacchi Uvo (Sweden)

Presentation topic:
The interacting system of climate and hydrology

Cintia Bertacchi Uvo is a Professor at the Department of Water Resources Engineering, Lund University. Her research interests lie on how climate and hydrology affect, interact and relate to each other in different time and space scales, typically from monthly to decadal. Prof. Uvo’s work is essentially interdisciplinary and dedicated to understanding of processes that are then statistically modeled and applied. In the latest years, the development of seasonal hydrological forecast based on climate variability has included a large part of her research.

Her work is very collaborative and international. Applications of her work have been made in many parts of the world and in collaboration with diverse institutions worldwide.

Prof. Uvo is also very active in education of doctoral students and has created several international courses with the objective of stimulating young researcher to comfortably walk on the bridge that connects climate and hydrology.

 

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Page updated                15.06.2012

LYNETVALUEWater and Environmental Engineering Laboratory, University of Oulu Thule Institute