About the Authors

Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Climate Change

N. LEROY POFF

Dr. Poff is an assistant professor of Biology at Colorado State University. He received his B.S. in biology from Hendrix College, his M.S. in environmental sciences from Indiana University, and his PhD in stream ecology from Colorado State University. He worked for several years as a research associate in Department of Zoology at the University of Maryland and served as Senior Scientist for Trout Unlimited in Arlington, VA before joining the faculty at Colorado State. His primary research interests are in aquatic ecology, specifically the broad consideration of how ecological processes and patterns are constrained by habitat structure and environmental variability at multiple spatial and temporal scales in aquatic ecosystems. This research provides a basis for predicting aquatic community attributes at geographic scales and for evaluating population and community responses to land-use alterations and regional climate changes. Dr. Poff has conducted field research in several regions of the U.S. including the Columbia and Colorado River basins. He is also a member of several professional societies including the Ecological Society of America, the North American Benthological Society, and Sigma Xi (The Research Society), and he serves on the Scientific & Technical Advisory Board of American Rivers.

MARK M. BRINSON

Dr. Brinson is Professor of Biology at East Carolina University. He received his B.S. at Heidelberg College (Ohio), M.S. in Botany from the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. from the University of Florida. He served with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, followed by Ph.D. work on the organic matter budget of a lowland tropical lake in Guatemala. Current research interests include the relationship of hydrology and hydroperiod to wetland ecosystem structure and function, classification and assessment of wetlands, and the effects of rising sea level on coastal wetlands. He participates in research at the Virginia Coast Reserve site of the Long Term Ecological Research program of the National Science Foundation. He served as president of the Society of Wetland Scientists and received the society's Merit Award in 1998. He chaired the Public Policy Review committee of the American Institute of Biological Science. He was a member of the National Research Council committee on Wetland Characterization and is currently chairing the NRC committee on Riparian Zones. He has provided testimony before U.S. Senate and House committees on the identification of wetlands.

JOHN W. DAY, Jr.

Dr. Day is the Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sciences in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and the Coastal Ecology Institute, School of the Coast & Environment at Louisiana State University, where he has taught since 1971. He has published extensively on the ecology and management of coastal systems and has over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He is co-author (with M. Kemp, C. Hall, and A. Yáñez-Arancibia) of Estuarine Ecology, coeditor (with C. Hall) of Ecological Modeling in Theory and Practice, coeditor (with W. Conner) of The Ecology of the Barataria Basin, An Estuarine Profile, and coeditor (with A. Yáñez-Arancibia) of the Ecology of Coastal Ecosystems in the Southern Mexico: The Terminos Lagoon Region. Professor Day received his PhD in marine sciences and environmental sciences from the University of North Carolina in 1971. Since then, he has conducted extensive research on the ecology and management of the Mississippi Delta region and for the last 25 years, he has studied coastal ecosystems in Mexico. He was a visiting professor in the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National University of Mexico in 1978-1979, at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands during 1986, at the Laboratoire d'Ecologie, Université Claude Bernard in Arles France during 1992-93, and in the Department of Geography at Cambridge University in 2000-2001. He has also worked with the University of Campeche and the Institute of Ecology in Mexico. Since 1992, Professor Day has worked in the Mediterranean studying the impacts of climate change on wetlands in Venice Lagoon and in the Po, Rhone and Ebro deltas.