Roland I. Hall

Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Science

Bachelor of Science (BSc), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Queen's

Email: rihall@uwaterloo.ca

Telephone: (519) 888-4567 ext. 32450

Office: Biology 2 255A

Recipient of the Ontario Premier's Research Excellence Award (PREA) 2003-2007 to support training of graduate students on the project: Ecological changes in the Mackenzie Basin Deltas: Assessing the roles of climate, hydrology and human activities on sensitive lakes and wetlands over the past thousand years.

I head the WATER Lab (University of WATerloo Environmental change Research Lab), a facility dedicated to the analysis of long term environmental records to address ecological issues.

Research interests

Applied aquatic ecology, paleolimnology, multiple stressors
My research combines fields of aquatic ecology, paleolimnology and multivariate statistics to assess effects of multiple stressors (nutrients, acidification, climate change, river regulation, species invasions) on lakes, wetlands and reservoirs. A focus is to quantify and predict ecosystem responses during degradation and recovery phases due to human disturbances and natural phenomena. Current projects assess effects of: 1) climatic variability and river regulation on hydro-ecological conditions of the MacKenzie Basin Deltas (Peace-Athabasca Delta, Alberta; Slave River Delta, NWT; MacKenzie River Delta, Yukon; 2) acid rain and climatic variability (drought) on Ontario lakes; 3) human land-use and climatic variability on diatom communities in Lake Malawi, Africa, during the past 300 years.

During 1997–1999, I led a team of researchers in a subarctic region of northern Sweden (68°N latitude) investigating effects of climate changes on subarctic lake ecosystems (Climate Impacts Research Centre).

Selected Publications

Student theses supervised

PhD theses

• Sokal, Michael. In progress. Assessment of hydroecological changes at the Slave River Delta, NWT, using diatoms, limnological and paleolimnological methods. (University of Waterloo, co-supervised with Brent Wolfe)
• Wiklund, Johan. In progress. Linkages between hydrology and ecology in shallow lakes and wetlands of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, northern Alberta (University of Waterloo, co-supervised with Brent Wolfe)
• Crenshaw, Michelle. In progress. Responses of aquatic communities in Muskoka-Haliburton, Ontario lakes to acidification, eutrophication and climatic variability. (University of Waterloo)
• Rosén, Peter. 2001. Holocene climate history in northern Sweden reconstructed from diatom, chironomid and pollen records and near-infrared spectroscopy of lake sediments (Umeå University, Sweden; co-supervised with Ingemar Renberg as supervisor)
• Bigler, Christian. 2001. Diatoms as indicators of Holocene climate and environmental change in northern Sweden. (Umeå University, Sweden; co-supervised with Ingemar Renberg)

MSc theses

• Sinnatamby, Niloshini. In progress. A 300-year long record of hydrological and ecological changes from basins in the Peace sector of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, northern Alberta.
• Puchniak, Megan. In progress. Paleolimnological reconstruction of Lake Malawi/Nyasa, East Africa, during the past 200 years. (University of Waterloo; co-supervised with Bob Hecky)
• Faulkenham, Shari. 2001. The effects of drought-induced acidification on diatom communities in two Precambrian Sheild lakes: A paleolimnological approach. (University of Waterloo)

Undergraduate theses

• Sokal, Michael. 2002. Use of sedimentary diatom assemblages to assess environmental changes during the Late PLeistocene at a mastodon site in Hyde Park, New York State.
• Jeziorski, Adam. 2001. Responses of diatom communities to changes in climate and terrestrial vegetation in a subarctic lake, northern Sweden.