55 years of - you decide

David W. Schindler, Canada A spectacular North American wilderness forms the backdrop to a canoeist on a Canadian Rocky Mountains lake. This extremely beautiful part of Canada enjoys protection by a vast national parks system that draws millions of visitors every summer season. The nature-loving man in the canoe is no doubt enjoying the beautiful scenery around him, and yet he has not come to Jasper National Park as a tourist. David W. Schindler, a professor of ecology based at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, loads samples of aquatic organisms into his canoe with the help of a bag-net. Another instrument chews into the clay sediment, bringing it up to the surface, while in a plastic bottle he collects water from the different strata of the lake. Schindler’s field samples provide him with facts about the abundance of certain species, biological diversity, levels of acidity, and concentrations of nutrients, toxic trace metals and chlorinated organic compounds, to mention but ...