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Federation University Australia’s Professor Peter Gell and colleagues from the United Kingdom have been successful in securing support for a third workshop under the Aquatic Transitions working group of the Future Earth program Past Global Changes (PAGES).

“The ongoing support of the executive committee of PAGES is very welcome,” Professor Gell, the group leader, said.

“These funds will enable us to bring together key researchers from across the world to complete our synthesis of the evidence for the first impact of humans on aquatic systems globally.

“It is widely recognised that human activities have had widespread deleterious impacts on the world’s aquatic systems,” Professor Gell said.

“In fact, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment painted a more serious picture of the state of aquatic systems than those on land.”

Sediment records have revealed changes occurring from pre-Roman times. The expansion of settlements in the industrial period caused widespread pollution in many northern hemisphere systems, and some in Australia were also impacted from as early as the mid-1800s.

This will be the third workshop hosted by the working group.

“The first two meetings, held at the British Geological Survey in Nottingham and in Maine, USA, set the agenda for the group and lead to a review publication in the journal WIRES Water,” Professor Gell said.

“We are looking to this meeting in February in Kuala Lumpur to compete key synthesis papers and to launch a volume on human impact on lake ecosystems in the Springer series Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research.

“Also, we are looking to bring together a South-East Asian chapter of the working group to assist researchers in the region develop their own research program.”

The working group has now received $60,000 support from the US and Swiss Science Foundations via the core project PAGES.