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MCC Daily Tribune

What can mud in the Finger Lakes tell us about the Industrial Revolution?

Please join the Chemistry and Geosciences Department and the Rochester Committee for Scientific Information for this year's presentation:  “Researching Fossil and Sedimentary Records of Lake Histories:  Focusing on the Western Finger Lakes” on Thursday, April 28th at 7pm via Zoom (see attachment or below for Zoom link).

Presentation Abstract:  Freshwater ecosystems like lakes, have long been influenced by anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, climate, and industry. Lake ecosystems are especially affected in terms of shifts in community dominance, invasion of foreign fauna, harmful cyano-algal blooms caused by agricultural run-off and introduction/regulation of sediment and nutrients. These anthropogenic stressors alter the water circulation, trophic state, and biodiversity of a given lake system. Development of tools to monitor the impact humans have on lake environments is necessary to identify at risk or severely altered habitats as well as to track the remediation of previously impacted habitats. This talk highlights a preliminary investigation and assessment of the biodiversity and geohistorical record of three Finger Lakes: Conesus, Canadice, and Honeoye in Western New York. All three lakes show a diverse living invertebrate community representing a modern novel ecosystem representing post-impact recovery after eutrophication of the lakes occurred during the 20th century. The geohistorical record of Conesus Lake evaluated using cored lake sediments preserves a clear signal of European settlement and industrial delivery of pollutants into the lake. This talk will showcase the application of paleobiological and sedimentological techniques to establish objective baselines for measuring the success of remediation and restoration efforts in aquatic ecosystems.

Presentor Information:  Dr. Malinowski received her B.S. in Geology at Beloit College, WI where she developed her interest in the field of paleontology on a Keck Consortium Research project investigating Silurian tentaculitoids from Arisaig, Nova Scotia. Dr. Malinowski further pursued her career receiving a M.S. at the University of Cincinnati investigating the paleoecology and diversity of Ordovician tentaculitoids and then focused more on the recent for her Ph.D. at Virginia Tech where she investigated the sequence stratigraphy and paleoecology of the Quaternary deposits of the Po Plain, Italy. Dr. Malinowski has done extensive research on combining paleobiological techniques with modern biological systems at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and continues this focus on merging conservation and paleobiology at SUNY Geneseo.

 

Webinar Zoom link:  https://monroecommunity.zoom.us/j/88545979936?pwd=WDRvVVRNWmxiQVFjWkVPQUxpME4rUT09

Passcode: 622113

 

Attached Files:
RCSI 2022 Annual Meeting Announcement - MCC.pdf

Jessica Barone
Chemistry and Geosciences
04/05/2022