Events & education
CIPHI National Virtual Education Session
March 31, 2026
Thursday, April 23 12pm EST
| Tracking & Forecasting Harmful Algal Blooms in Alberta with Rolf Vinebrooke, PhD ‘98, PDF ‘99 Professor, Faculty of Science – Biological Sciences, University of AB |
REGISTER NOW A mounting task in aquatic sciences is to better monitor harmful algal blooms (HABs). In Canada, satellite Earth Observation is used to meet this challenge in a few large lakes. Rolf will highlight our novel ground truthing of an algorithm for tracking HABs in Albertan lakes using Sentinel 2 and Landsat satellite-based data and confirmatory evidence from in-lake concentrations of chlorophyll and taxonomically diagnostic phytoplankton pigments. Calibration and validation of our model enabled testing for trends and discovery of within-lake sources of HABs using archival satellite imagery spanning a period of 6 years. Our approach also involves hindcasting and forecasting HABs in Albertan lakes to help provide valuable historical baseline conditions and future trends to the year 2100. |
 Rolf is an aquatic community ecologist and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta. Rolf leads a research team that focuses on how global change stressors—such as climate change, invasive species, and nutrient pollution—impact the biodiversity and health of freshwater ecosystems ranging from alpine to prairie lakes, ponds, and streams. Rolf first studied the ecological mechanisms of biological recovery in previously acidified boreal lakes (MSc’94, University of Toronto) before conducting doctoral research into the impacts of stratospheric ozone depletion and ultraviolet radiation on alpine lake food webs (PhD’98, University of Regina). Rolf’s postdoctoral research (PDF’99, University of Alberta) with David Schindler examined compensatory species dynamics in restoration of lakes at the Experimental Lakes Area in northwestern Ontario. |
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