Three major themes or interests link my research activities. These are the community and ecosystem ecology of microorganisms, the applied ecology of microbial communities and the development of methods for the determination of microbial biomass, activity, community structure and trophic interactions.
My major focus is on aquatic microbial communities and their role within ecosystems, first in marine sediments and more recently in freshwater and groundwater sediments; the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has seen a return of my marine efforts. I have often investigated factors that control the distribution and abundance of microorganisms and structure their communities. Factors include predation, light, flow, food resource, temperature, and sediment disruption.
I include studies of the impacts of human society on the environment among my research activities. Studies have included organic pollution and bacterial contamination in groundwater, effects of fishing activity on marine sediments, introduction of drilling fluids in the marine environment, the environmental impacts of salmonid net-pen culture in both marine and freshwater systems and various aspects of lipophilic pollutants in marine and freshwater systems.
