Katrina Moser

Associate Professor
Department Chair

Katrina Moser

Contact Information

Office: Room 2407, SSC
Tel: 519 661-2111, 80115
E-mail: kmoser@uwo.ca

Research Areas

Paleolimnology, climate change, paleoecology, quaternary environments, water quantity and quality, limnology)

Research Interests

My research is on water quality and quantity issues, and specifically how humans are impacting these important resources. Key questions that I am interested in are:

  1. How will future climate warming impact water resources?
  2. How has anthropogenic pollution affected “pristine” alpine and arctic lakes?
  3. Can climate and pollution synergistically impact water resources?

In order to look at these questions I use paleolimnological techniques, which provide me with long term (100s to 1000s of years) records of changes in water quality and quantity. Paleolimnology uses fossils and geochemical signals preserved in lake and river sediments (mud) to infer environmental change. Presently, I have four main research projects ongoing:

  1. Determining long term records of drought in the western United States using alpine lake sediments;
  2. Determining environmental change for the last 10,000 years from sediments from lakes and small ponds on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic;
  3. Determining long term records of environmental change in the Canadian Rockies and
  4. Looking at changes in water quality and quantity in southwestern Ontario.

Teaching

GEO 3352 – Paleolimnology and Global Environmental Change

GEO 9099 – Research Design and Presentation

GEO 9216 – Paleolimnology

Supervised Graduate Students and Theses Titles

PhD Students

  • J. Adebisi (joint-supervised) (Current) T.B.D.
  • K. Ng (Current) Lake ecosystem response to climate change and nutrient enrichment
  • R. Doyle (joint-supervised) (2020) Characterizing organic matter sources to lakes using stable isotope science
  • E. Hundey (2014) Nitrate sources and lake response in high elevation lakes, Uinta Mountains, Utah
  • J. Davis (2007) Ephemeral desert pools, Moab University of Utah
  • G. Atwood (2006) Great Salt Lake Superelevated Shorelines Associated with 1986/86 Floods (University of Utah)
  • A. Bloom (2006) High resolution analysis of climate change in California (University of Utah)

Masters Students

  • N. Mann (Current) T.B.D.
  • C. Stewart (Current) Understanding drivers of lacustrine processes and their human impacts in small lake systems
  • B. Brasier (2023) Arctic Lake Response to Warming: A Paleolimnological Study in the NWT 
  • D. Zilkey (2021) An Investigation of Epiphytic Diatom Substrate Specificity and Its Use in Paleolimnology
  • A. Gall (2015) The Effects of Warming Temperatures, Fire, and Landscape Change on Lake Production in Mountain Lakes, Alberta, Canada
  • S. Ngai (2014) Determining effects of warming temperature and precipitation on physical and chemical properties of Uinta Mountain Lakes, Utah, USA
  • K. Hollingshead (2012) Diatoms in Castor Lake (North-Central Washington, USA) - Proxies of Climate ad Hydrologic Variation
  • O. Squire (2012) Examining Atmospheric Dust Deposition and its effects on Alpine Lakes in the Uinta Mountains, Utah
  • K. Alexander (2011) A Paleolimnological Investigation of the Impacts of Recent Human Activity and Temperature Change on Two Small Lakes in Southern Ontario
  • A. Bair (2008) Translating Seasonal Climate Forecasts from Large Climate Divisions to Local Stations University of Utah
  • J. Hartman (2006) Environmental Change in the Uinta Mountains (University of Utah)
  • J. Siderius (2004) Treeline dynamics in the Uinta Mountains (University of Utah)
  • A. Bloom (2001) Inferring Drought in California (University of Utah)
  • M. Walsh (2001) Fire frequency in the Uinta Mountains (University of Utah)
  • P. Kimball (2001) Climate change inferred from Bear Lake sediments (University of Utah)

Publications

Refereed Journals

Doyle, R.M. Liu, Z., Walker, J.T., Hladyniuk, R., Moser, K.A. and Longstaffe, F.J. 2021. A 900-year record of effective mositire in the Laurentian Great Lakes region. Quaternary Science Reviews 270: 107174 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107174.

Wurtsbaugh, W., Leavitt, P. and Moser, K.A. 2020. Effects of a century of mining and industrial production on metal contamination of a model saline ecosystem, Great Salt Lake, Utah. Environmental Pollution 266: 115072. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115072.

Sia, M.E., Doyle, R.M. and Moser, K.A. 2020. Recent trends in mountain lake algal production: evaluating the response to fish stocking relative to regional environmental stressors. Lake and Reservoir Management. Early Access https://doi.org/10.1080/10402381.2020.1814462.

Porinchu, D.F., MacDonald, G.M., Moser, K.A., Rolland, N., Kremenetski, K., Seppä, H., Rühland, K.M. 2019. Evidence of abrupt climate change at 9.3 ka and 8.2 ka in the central Canadian Arctic: Connection to the North Atlantic and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Quaternary Science Reviews 219:201-217.

Moser, K.A., Baron, J.S., Brahney, J., Oleksy, I.A., Saros, J.E., Hundey, E.J., Sadro, S.A., Kopáček, J., Sommaruga, R., Kainz, M.J., Strecker, A.L., Chandra, S., Walters, D.M., Preston, D.L., Michelutti, N., Lepori, F., Spaulding, S.A., Christianson, K.R., Melack, J.M., Smol, J.P. 2019. Mountain lakes: eyes on global environmental change. Global and Planetary Change 178:77-95.

Chapters in Books

Moser, K.A. 2013 'Paleolimnology: Contributions of Paleolimnological Research to Biogeography' in Encyclopaedia of Quaternary Sciences (Second Edition) ed S.A. Elias (Elsevier's Science Technology: Oxford, UK) 313-325.