Olaf Jensen
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Climate change is warming lakes and rivers around the world, yet some aquatic ecosystems are holding up better than expected. Northern Mongolia is one of these bright spots.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
freshwater ecology
aquatic ecology
climate change
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2028
What they work on
- Test whether fish in Lake Hovsgol and the Eg River use behavioral thermoregulation, moving to cooler microhabitats, to cope with warming, using electronic tags and temperature-logging sensors.
- Examine whether variation among individual fish, such as in temperature tolerance, helps coldwater populations persist in warming Mongolian waters.
- Assess how predator-prey and host-parasite relationships offset or worsen warming effects, using DNA metabarcoding of the diets and microbiomes of endangered fishes.
More about the research
Air temperatures there have risen almost three times faster than the global average, but coldwater fish populations remain surprisingly robust. This project asks what makes these lakes, rivers and fish resilient, building on nearly 20 years of research, monitoring and sample collection.
Why it matters
Understanding why some coldwater fish populations survive rapid warming could help fishery managers protect fish in warming US lakes and rivers. Knowing whether fish rely on cool refuges, built-in tolerance or changing species interactions could point to which habitats and populations need protection as climate changes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chris Funk
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether cutthroat trout predators are more sensitive to rising water temperatures than their tailed frog tadpole prey, combining stream environment measurements, genomics and physiology experiments to measure heat adaptation.
Matthew Troia
University of Texas at San Antonio, TX·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Measure acute cold and heat tolerance, acclimation potential, and energy budgets in three tropical and three related temperate freshwater fishes. Use these lab experiments to test whether tropical and temperate species differ in thermal physiology.
Justin Pomeranz
Colorado Mesa University, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Describe how body-size distributions, measured by the power-law exponent λ, vary across U.S. streams and rivers sampled by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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