Our research questions

Water quality and human decision making are driven by the dynamic interactions among and between human and natural systems within lake catchments.

This project seeks to address 4 main questions:

• Research Question 1: How do human land-use decisions interact with catchment biophysical characteristics to influence the effects of nutrient loading on lake water quality?

• Research Question 2: What are the essential management variables (EMVs) in coupled lake-catchment systems, and at what temporal resolution must those variables be measured to detect feedbacks from natural to human systems?

• Research Question 3: How does collective action affect land-use decision making and policies at the local, catchment, and state levels to alter nutrient loading and impact lake water quality?

• Research Question 4: What are the key generalizations that can be derived from the focal catchments to understand how water quality and human activity are linked at the regional to continental scale?