JOSHUA THIENPONT
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Research

Research Interests

Lake ecosystems are valuable natural resources, as well as important sentinels of environmental change. An important component of my research uses lake sediment cores as natural archives of long-term environmental change, since lake sediments integrate a variety of biological, physical, and chemical proxies into a stratigraphic profile that can be used to reconstruct past environmental conditions. This long-term perspective on environmental change can also provide insights into aquatic ecology and biogeography, as well as issues relating to lake management. This is especially true in regions where monitoring data are scarce, such as Canada's north, where I have been lucky enough to conduct much of my research over the past decade.
"The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system!
A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche.
A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses.
The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late.
That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
​- Frank Herbert’s Dune
Joshua Thienpont, PhD, FRCGS
Sessional Assistant Professor
York University
​jthienpo (at) yorku.ca

​All material copyright 2020

  • Home
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Courses Taught
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Presentations
    • Research Awards
    • Media
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