Our team

Dr. Katherine Webster is a landscape limnologist with a research focus on understanding how hydrogeomorphic features shape lake characteristics across broad spatial extents and influence lake responses to stressors ranging from acid rain to nutrient enrichment. She spent 20 years working for the Wisconsin DNR and built on that management experience through her later focus on macrosystems research. Over the past 12 years, she has played an active role in the development of the MSU LAGOS-US data products.

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Dr. Patrick Hanly is an ecologist and limnologist who applies big data to macroscale questions, focusing on aquatic community ecology, ecosystem change, and integrating diverse data sets, including those from community science. He also works in support of various projects as the lab's research program coordinator and teaches in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University.

Dr. Xinyu Sun's study focuses on understanding the interactions between lake planktonic communities and their biogeochemical environment as well as plankton responses to climate change and human disturbances. She conducted lab and field experiments to investigate the interactive effects of elevated salinity and heatwaves on freshwater zooplankton physiology, populations, and communities in her PhD dissertation. At Michigan State University, she is using data-intensive approaches to study lakes at the continental scale and the multi-scaled landscape environment that affect lakes.

Kendall is a dual M.S. student in Fisheries & Wildlife and EEB at MSU. Her master's thesis aims to create a model that can predict how harmful algal blooms in lakes in the U.S. will respond to future climate change scenarios. She received her B.S. from the University of Michigan with majors in EEB and German. Kendall’s research interests include aquatic and Arctic ecology, climate change, microbiology, and entomology; and she hopes to pursue a PhD related to aquatic and microbial ecology after obtaining her M.S. Outside of work, Kendall loves to go fishing, hike, and create art!

Arika is interested in understanding the mechanisms influencing environmental quality and its effects on human health outcomes. She is focused on using open-source data to explore how lake water quality differs among racial and ethnic communities and what social and ecological variables could impact any differences in quality.

Abigail is an undergraduate student studying microbiology and mathematics. She is interested in combining math and biology to answer questions in ecology and conservation biology. Her current research focuses on combining social science and limnology to address Environmental Justice issues for lakes across the conterminous US.