Soren Brothers, Ph.D.

Field: Water Resources
Areas of Focus: Aquatic Ecosystems, Climate Change, Ecosystems Conservation, Ecosystems Management

Expertise

• Regime shifts
• Climate change
• Aquatic ecosystems
• Lake metabolic processes
• Benthic/littoral processes
• Ecosystem conservation
• Ecosystem management

Bio

Dr. Soren Brothers is an assistant professor in the Watershed Sciences Department and Ecology Center. His research broadly examines how aquatic ecosystems interact with the terrestrial and atmospheric environments around them. Much of his research examines the flow of carbon through lakes and rivers to understand how this is related to the conditions of the ecosystem and its food web structure (i.e., comparing clear-water ecosystems with large, submerged plant communities to turbid ones dominated by algae). As the processing and landscape flow of carbon also determines the surface carbon dioxide and methane (greenhouse gas) emissions from aquatic ecosystems to the atmosphere, his research also examines the role that lakes and rivers play in the global carbon cycle, and climate change, in particular. His team also focuses on the role that the sediment surface and near-shore zones play in these processes, being historically overlooked in the literature. His other interests include the concept of regime shift theory, in understanding how tipping points and feedback loops can produce sudden, potentially irreversible changes in ecosystems that have been exposed to only gradual anthropogenic effects (such as nutrient loading from agriculture). Lastly, he and his research group work to find ways to use the fundamental understanding gained from limnological research (at the biogeochemical level) to help guide sound societal and political management strategies for inland aquatic systems, taking into consideration both local ecological and global climatic implications of anthropogenic actions.