Partner overview

University College London (UCL)

University College London (UCL) is one of the UK’s top multi-faculty research Universities. It is the original University of London and the oldest in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge. The Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC) in UCL specialises in freshwater ecology and palaeolimnology. It has a major international reputation for its work on the use of palaeoecological techniques, especially diatom analysis, in understanding changes in the structure and functioning of lake ecosystems through time. Its pioneering work on diatom-based transfer functions in particular has been applied to problems of surface water acidification and eutrophication. A major current emphasis is the use of diatoms, Cladocera and aquatic macrofossils in the sediments of shallow lakes to test hypotheses on reference states, resilience and functional change in response to nutrient and other stresses.

Martin Kernan

Martin Kernan (PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow in the ECRC. His research has focused on European mountain lake ecosystems especially with respect to the effects of climate change and atmospheric pollution on aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem health. He previously co-ordinated the EU Euro-limpacs project and is currently co-ordinator of the EU REFRESH project..

Rick Battarbee

Rick Battarbee (Emeritus Professor) is a diatomist and palaeolimnologist and has been involved extensively in EU research programmes. He was PI for the EU-funded research projects AL:PE, MOLAR, EMERGE and EDDI. He is also PI for the FP6 Integrated Project, Euro-limpacs (“Global change impacts on European freshwater ecosystems”). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and has published over 200 research papers.

Gavin Simpson

Gavin Simpson (PhD) is a Research Fellow in the ECRC. His research includes the use of multi-proxy analogue matching techniques in the restoration of disturbed aquatic ecosystems and the multivariate statistical analysis of biological and environmental data.

Gina Clarke

Gina Clarke (PhD) trained as a palaeolimnologist with expertise in using diatoms, plant macrofossils and chironomid head capsule assemblages to track changes in past climate and environmental conditions. In recent years she has also been using diatoms and phytoplankton to assess more contemporary issues including the seasonal succession of phytobenthos in UK lakes, phytoplankton biodiversity from both the UK and Russia, and nutrient interpretation of UK rivers using the Trophic Diatom Index.

Viktorija Bauere

Viktorija Bauere is responsible for developing AMPHORA - the ECRC's database.

Carl Sayer

Carl Sayer's expertise lie in palaeoecology, aquatic ecology, diatoms, aquatic plants and plant macrofossils. His recent work has focused on the use of combined ecological and palaeoecological approaches for determining the impacts of eutrophication on ecological processes and stability in shallow lakes.