Speaker to examine decline of eelgrass
At Nature P.E.I.’s March meeting, Michael van den Heuvel will discuss the decline of eelgrass in Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence estuaries.
Entitled Eelgrass: Decline of an Ecologically Significant Species in Southern Gulf of
St. Lawrence Estuaries, the lecture will be held in the Carriage House at Beaconsfield on West Street in Charlottetown on Tuesday, March 3, 7:30 p.m. All are welcome to meet van den Heuvel and learn more eelgrass and the decline of this ecologically significant species in local estuaries.
Seagrasses are saltwater adapted flowering plants that are threatened by human activities around the globe. In the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, eelgrass, which is the native seagrass, is also impacted by human activities, particularly due to increases in nutrients from land-based activities.
van den Heuvel will share the findings of a study conducted in local estuaries to determine the means to monitor changes to eelgrass health in our estuaries. Potential factors affecting eelgrass were examined, and it was determined that nitrogen loading was the dominant factor relating to eelgrass decline.
Growing up in Northern Ontario, van den Heuvel completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Waterloo and a PhD at the University of Waterloo, where he started his research career studying chlorinated dioxins and furans and their effect on fish exposed to pulp and paper mill effluent.
After a post-doctoral studying aquatic reclamation in the oil sands, van den Heuvel immigrated to New Zealand and was employed by the New Zealand Forestry Research Institute where he worked on a variety of issues, including pulp and paper effluent, nutrient enrichment and eutrophication and endocrine disruption.
He returned to Canada in 2005 for a Canada research chair in watershed ecological integrity and for the past 14 years has worked on oil sands, pulp and paper, eutrophication, sediment effects, pesticides, fisheries and environmental flows in Canada and P.E.I.