Karin Limburg is a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  Karin received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, a Master of Science at the University of Florida under the mentorship of Howard T. Odum, and earned a doctorate at Cornell University under Simon Levin.  Interested in the nexus of humans and nature, Karin’s studies have tended toward the transdisciplinary.  Whether the boundary crossing went into physics or into ecological economics, ecology has remained the central focus. The Hudson River estuary and watershed have served as a home base of study, but longstanding interest and work in Sweden expanded her research into the Baltic Sea, the largest anthropogenic dead zone, and other regions, fresh or salty, around the world.  Karin is also a visiting professor at the Department of Aquatic Resources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and adjunct at the Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, and the Graduate Program at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.  Currently she serves as president of the International Fisheries Section of the American Fisheries Society.  Her hobby is wild mushroom collecting.

Keynote Presentation:

Through the Heads of Fishes: Anthropogenic Impacts on Fishes Revealed by Otolith Chemistry

Fishes are increasingly subject to the accelerating, intensifying pressures of human activities, from direct alterations of habitat to climate change.  As fishery biologists, we have our various “windows” through which we peer into fish population ecology: genetics, tracking, modeling, etc. Here I’ll discuss the insights that emerge from studying fish otolith chemistry. Otoliths are interesting biominerals because they are composed of aragonite (CaCO3) precipitated on a complex scaffolding of proteins, and as such, various trace elements and isotopes can become incorporated in both materials. Although we surely do not understand all the mechanisms driving incorporation, new insights are continually gained. The rich chemical detail that can be collected over individual fishes’ lives is time-stamped by the chronometric properties of otoliths. Thus, details of life histories are beginning to emerge that allow us greater interpretation of stresses. I will present a few case studies that illustrate how we can use otolith chemistry to understand the impacts of the Anthropocene: ocean deoxygenation; damming large rivers; and possible proxies of metabolism that can track lifetime condition. I’ll conclude with a few thoughts about future directions.