Don Charles, PhD currently leads the Patrick Center’s Phycology Section, which has a staff of eight, including four PhD scientists. He has published 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles and over 75 other articles and technical reports. He has made or co-authored over 200 presentations at scientific meetings. Before coming to the Academy, Charles was Aquatic Ecologist with the NY State Adirondack Park Agency, Assistant and Associate Scientist in the Biology Department at Indiana University, and university-cooperator Limnologist and Team Leader at the U.S. EPA Environmental Research Laboratory in Corvallis, OR. He was co-coordinator of the Paleoecological Investigation of Lake Acidification (PIRLA) project, a large multi-investigator study of the effects of acidic deposition on low-alkalinity lakes in four regions of the country. His recent and ongoing research projects continue the approach used in PIRLA of analyzing diatom assemblages in sediment cores to infer past ecological conditions, primarily to address environmental issues such as eutrophication, land-use alteration and climate change. Charles and his research group are also analyzing diatom and soft-algae as part of several federal, state and corporate river monitoring programs. Most of these programs are designed to assess water quality conditions and help regulatory agencies develop improved biological indicators and criteria for use in protecting aquatic ecosystems.

Applied freshwater ecology; use of diatoms as ecological indicators; paleolimnology; water quality assessment, eutrophication, climate change