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Retention Time as a Key Variable of Reservoir Limnology - Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)

Essential courses, such as hydrology for nonengineering majors or limnology for nonscience majors, are rarely offered; extant courses often have excessive requirements for an ecosystem-oriented program. Such specialized courses are necessary for advanced training, but they can inhibit interdisciplinary integration if no alternative courses at the general level are offered.

True instructional interaction among faculty of different departments rarely exists in reality. Often members of the aquatic faculty of the same university never meet or interact because of ideological differences and the general time constraints in a very demanding profession.

Strong educational programs for aquatic ecologists are most frequently associated with strong research programs, where students have opportunities for direct field and experimental involvement in problem solving. Ecosystem-oriented programs are essential, but such instructional programs are rare owing to a number of synergistic factors. Government support of faculty-student research programs in limnology is inadequate, given the value of freshwater resources and the crucial importance of basic and applied research and education to effective management of these resources Lewis et al.

The National Science Foundation NSF is the only significant agency that supports fundamental limnological research in academic institutions. With extremely severe competition for these limited funds, the probability of long-term support, which is required for ecosystem research, is low.

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Alternative funding sources without specific mission commitments are very few. The weak governmental support and budgetary anonymity of limnology have contributed to a decline in the independence and recognition of the discipline Lewis et al.

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Greater emphasis was placed on analytical evaluations of intercoupled relationships, particularly among nutrient-phytoplankton interactions, in the subsequent period ss. Time is inadequate in a traditional four-year curriculum to include the necessary training and practical experience. Looking for other ways to read this? Many management decisions are made by default because of lack of real information, based largely on assumed physical processes and chemical reactions from models or pure solution chemistry. Learn more about Amazon Prime. The opposite conditions prevail, however, in nearly all American universities.

This support structure has also contributed to fragmentation of the discipline into specialized fields of inquiry and weakening of their interconnections. As a result, university researchers tend to conduct research in small, specialized areas in which specific results can be obtained relatively rapidly. Extreme competition for scarce resources also promotes isolation among faculty and researchers.

Instruction by faculty tends to become specialized and insular, with minimal interdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to the inadequate federal funding of limnological programs and the shift of fiscal responsibilities for higher education to state and internal sources, universities commonly encourage popular and relatively well-funded subdisciplines, such as molecular biology or medicine.

A number of particularly strong research and instructional programs in aquatic ecology in major universities Yale University, Indiana University, University of Washington, and others have been terminated in the past decade. This decline is in sharp contrast to the marked increase in aquatic ecosystem programs in many other industrialized countries where the critical importance of research foundations to effective management of fresh waters is recognized.

Strong instructional and research programs in limnology have emerged in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, where the research and instructional liaisons between universities and environmental agencies are particularly vigorous and there is recognition of the importance of understanding the quantitative dynamics of controlling factors for effective management and restoration of freshwater ecosystems.

In the United States, several alternatives have emerged by default. Limnology has often languished in departments of biological sciences, which are too narrowly based, while emerging in departments of fisheries and schools of natural resources, where stream ecology and wetlands are more relevant. Aquatic chemistry and environmental hydraulics programs related to lakes and rivers have developed in engineering departments. Environmental resource programs have proliferated in geography and resource groups with minimal science underpinnings, but effective solutions of water resource problems require an understanding of metabolic constraints within ecosystems and the biogeochemical dependencies of ecosystem functioning.

Such fragmentation frustrates students who wish to obtain essential interdisciplinary training and faculty who wish to communicate and collaborate in both instruction and research. Many small aquatic foci within a university also compete less effectively with larger, departmentally oriented programs for funding, positions, and program development. Another development is an increase in the programs in ecology and environmental sciences in non-research-oriented colleges and universities. Often these programs develop in response to perceived needs for broadly trained individuals in environmental sciences, deficiencies of those programs in larger universities, and dedicated individual faculty members.

Students of the better programs are involved in research projects, and dedicated instruction is common. Many of these programs, however, lack the necessary physical, chemical, and biological expertise. Often a single committed individual has developed an admirable but modest program without the programmatic resources required.

A number of exceptional programs exist at undergraduate schools; these should be promoted and enhanced. In times of limited resources, dilution of resources at the expense of quality is unwise.

Phytoplankton community assessments of seven southeast U.S. cooling reservoirs - ScienceDirect.
Boots and Bullets (Mills & Boon Intrigue) (Whitehorse, Montana: Winchester Ranch Reloaded, Book 1).
Reservoir limnology: ecological perspectives [1990].
The Authors Guide to Writing Press Releases.
It Should be a Crime.

See discussion of a national initiative in general education below. Effective management of freshwater resources ultimately must be based on an in-depth understanding of the structure and physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms governing biotic development within lake, river, and wetland ecosystems. This understanding must be sufficiently detailed to encompass both the individualities of the ecosystems and the functional commonalities that prevail among them. Limnological education should strive to train limnologists 1 with the critical scientific underpinnings required for understanding integrative ecosystem processes and 2 with sufficient understanding of ecosystem components to make effective managerial and regulatory decisions.

These objectives are rarely accomplished in training programs. Limnology students frequently are trained in general biology or environmental engineering, with specialized exposure to a course in general limnology and one or more courses in the biology of aquatic organisms e. Limnology is usually taught as a brief lecture course, with no exposure to field conditions.

Rarely are students more.

Dissertational research in graduate school, although often of excellent quality, is frequently narrow and laboratory oriented. Recently, a few vocal schools have advocated empirical correlational modeling in limnology with no appreciable understanding of causality or controlling variables. A strong bias exists toward zoological aspects of limnology.

Deeply rooted in historical and in some cases religious foundations, 1 limnology has been, and still is, taught primarily by biologists with zoological training and interests. The importance of consumers in determining the biomass, species composition, and production of prey is paramount among the principles governing aquatic food web structure. Size-selective predation by fish on zooplankton is among the most predictable community phenomena.

Yet generally less than 10 to 20 percent of aquatic ecosystem energetics and regulation is associated with animals Wetzel, The pivotal importance of organic matter produced by photosynthetic organisms both within the lake or river and within the drainage basin and imported to the water body, and of degradation, biogeochemical cycling, and energy fluxes, is markedly understudied and poorly taught.

It is important that the enormous existing zoological information be integrated correctly into educational and research evaluations of ecosystem operations and regulation. Integration at the ecosystem level is required of studies and teaching of system components. Limnology is a composite of physical, chemical, geological, and biological topics, and an integration among these subdisciplines is essential for the interdependent ecosystem perspective and effective management of inland aquatic ecosystems. Coupled research and teaching are essential to achieve this training.

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The premier position that animals have assumed in biological study, ecological research, and conceptual developments of ecology cannot be questioned. Historical roots of zoological dominance in aquatic ecological study and conceptual developments are varied and include the food and economic importance of fish and aquatic insects, the early relative ease of sampling and examination of population and community interactions of larger organisms, and—in part—the religion-inspired omnipotence of humans and other animals over other organisms, particularly plants and microbes.

The idea of humans as supreme over the environment has prevailed in recent history, particularly in the schools of Goethe, Spencer, and Darwin. The behavioral characteristics of animals, fish as a protein source, and human biology related to medicine have contributed further to a greater emphasis on animals than on plants or microbiota and to weakened understanding of the couplings and interactive regulations at the ecosystem levels cf. Educational programs in limnology should be redesigned and strengthened to achieve the breadth of the ecosystem perspective and to couple that perspective with prudent uses and management of freshwater resources.

The public must be kept informed about the importance of ecosystem-oriented limnology to the wise management of inland waters, the essential characteristics of inland waters, and the value of these resources. Instruction in general limnology or aquatic ecology not just biology should be conducted at every institution of higher education, preferably by faculty with some interest and training in limnology. Training for professional limnologists inland aquatic ecologists obviously must be much more intensive and interdisciplinary.

Most institutions, however, are not committed to the development of a program in limnology. There is an urgent need to properly train limnologists in the United States at both a research level and a practicing level. There are many viewpoints about how limnological training should be carried out. Present education in aquatic ecology suffers from inertia, and laissez-faire attitudes among faculty are common.

It is my thesis that programs must be structured more rigorously than has been the case in the past and that research and practical training are best done simultaneously.

Retention Time as a Key Variable of Reservoir Limnology - Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)

Several universities in the United States should make coordinated commitments, rigorously screened by a panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences with national scientific societies in aquatic ecology and supported by the federal government, to develop regional university-based schools of limnology Wetzel, These schools would train both limnological practitioners and researchers from the undergraduate through the doctoral and postdoctoral levels.

Excellence in the medical profession emanates from medical schools that both train practicing physicians and conduct basic research. Similarly, schools of limnology should train limnologists to function as effective diagnosticians and problem solvers and should also train professional researchers to conduct active research on the fundamentals of aquatic ecosystems.

Just as in the medical profession, professional researchers and faculty would be very few in relation to the practitioners that are applying the results of research to practical problems. Professional researchers must demonstrate the capacity for continuing innovative contributions to the discipline. Improved programs of instruction and training must be phased into the existing spectrum of largely biology and engineering programs. The proposed schools of limnology are designed to augment existing programs,.

Most of the existing educational routes, largely through departments of biological sciences, would continue their traditional programs in aquatic biology, water resources, fisheries management, etc. Freshwater resources are of such value to the economy and health of the country Francko and Wetzel, ; Benke, ; Thornton et al.

The interdisciplinary nature of limnology mandates that programs or schools of limnology consist of integrated instruction from disciplines not normally aggregated into a single department or even division. Just as chemists must be versed in physical, inorganic, organic, and other facets of chemistry before specialization, limnologists should be required to know the basics of geomorphology, hydrology, aquatic inorganic and organic chemistry, biochemistry, biology from bacteria to fish, biostatistics, and other facets of limnology.

Ideally, students would commit early to limnological training. A basic two-year curriculum in mathematics and science should be followed by upper-level courses that maximize understanding of inland aquatic ecosystems, their biota, biogeochemical cycling, and management Box 1. A rigorous program of instruction of this depth and thoroughness will require discipline and perseverance. Time is inadequate in a traditional four-year curriculum to include the necessary training and practical experience. Electives in liberal education are limited to the early phases of the curriculum, as is the case in nearly every structured professional program e.

Claims that limiting liberal arts electives would produce narrow-minded graduates are not substantiated. In contrast, there is abundant experience that graduates poorly trained in aquatic ecology are often functionally disadvantaged and require many years of expensive and inefficient on-the-job training before becoming moderately productive. That internal training commonly comes from individuals who received their training 15 to 25 years earlier, thus frequently perpetuating antiquated methods and understanding.

Options include a four-year program in which two or more full summers are devoted to internships with government environmental agencies, consulting firms, university research projects, and other training programs or a five-year curriculum similar to professional nursing programs. The fifth year would be relegated to ''practicals," in which participants analyze problem ecological situations at an integrated ecosystem level.

RESERVOIR ECOSYSTEM 1

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View or edit your browsing history. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. R4 R47 Available. Find it at other libraries via WorldCat Limited preview. Contributor Thornton, Kent W. Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents Perspectives on Reservoir Limnology K. Reservoir Transport Processes D. Dissolved Oxygen Dynamics T.

Reservoir Nutrient Dynamics R.