Dr. Harry L. Gibbons, Jr. / President & Co-Founder

Email – limnodr@comcast.net

Phone – (360) 286-0921

Dr. Gibbons has 40 years of experience in applied limnology, lake, reservoir, river, stream, and wetland restoration. Harry has specifically planned/designed management and restoration programs for over 280 lakes/reservoir, over 100 ponds, and 40 river systems. Harry earned his Ph.D. in limnology and MS in Environmental Engineering from Washington State University and his BS in biology from Gonzaga University. His expertise includes lake and watershed management, lake restoration, integrated aquatic plant management, aquatic invasive species (AIS) management (developing non-point source control solutions), stream assessment, fish passage, aquatic habitat assessment, wetland restoration and stormwater management. Harry is a recognized leader in the development and implementation of in-lake activities for techniques like phosphorus inactivation (alum), dredging, hypolimnetic aeration, aeration and complete circulation, AIS management, and integrated aquatic plant management. His in-lake and wetland BMP designs have earned him environmental excellence awards, for example Phantom/Larsen Lakes and Lake Stevens restoration have received award honors from the Consulting Engineering Council of Washington for excellence in environmental projects in 1993 and 1995. Both projects included hypolimnetic aeration, stream and wetland restoration, stormwater BMPs and habitat enhancement. In 2012, Harry was given the Secchi Disk Award by the North American Lake Management Society for his outstanding technical contributions and service to help promote lake management. Harry has served on the North American Lake Management Society Board of Directors three times, 1992-1994, 2004-2006, and 2008-2010 as President Elect, President and Past President. He was a founding member and served on the board of the Washington State Lake Protection Association and was President in 1990. Harry has been a research graduate faculty at Washington State University (1981-1984), and Portland State University, (1998-1999), and for over 30 years the lead limnologist for Tetra Tech, Inc. In addition to his lake work, he has conducted comprehensive river and reservoir limnological studies in several major river systems including the Columbia, Snake, Spokane, Clearwater, Chehalis, Green, Wynoochee, Susitna and Pend Oreille Rivers, including 15 hydroelectric reservoirs. Harry has authored numerous technical reports and limnological journal and magazine articles, he was also co-presenter and author for the Phosphorus Inactivation & Interception Workshop & Manual, 2002-15, co-author of A Citizen’s Manual for Developing an Integrated Aquatic Vegetation Management Plan for the Washington State Department of Ecology, NALMS’ Aquatic Plant Management in Lakes and Reservoirs, 1996 for EPA, and Guide for Developing Integrated Aquatic Vegetation Management Plans in Oregon, Portland State University, 1999.

 

Dick Osgood / Secretary, Treasurer & Co-founder

Email – Dick@DickOsgood.com

Phone – (952) 237-0969

Dick Osgood is educated as a scientist (MS Aquatic Ecology & Geology; BS Biology), experienced as an Environmental Planner and has worked for and with public, private and nonprofit organizations. Dick specializes in developing lake management plans, invasive species management, diagnostic studies, modeling and alum dosing. Dick has authored numerous scientific journal papers, made hundreds of presentations at professional meetings, is the author of regular columns and has frequently served as an expert witness. Dick is also trained as a mediator and facilitator. Dick has served on the Board of Directors of the North American Lake Management Society (Past-President), Minnesota Waters and Minnesota Lakes Association (Officer & Public Policy Committee chair), Conservation Minnesota, Excelsior Rotary Board and the South Lake-Excelsior Chamber of Commerce Board. Dick was an invited delegate to the Symposium on the Ecological Basis for Lake and Reservoir Management at the University of Leicester, England, is a co-instructor of the Alum Workshop at the Annual North American Lake Management Society Workshop, has authored a chapter in the book ‘Managing Lakes and Reservoirs’, and Dick’s consulting business, Osgood Consulting LLC, was named the North American Lake Management Society’s ‘Outstanding Corporation’ in 2005.

 

Dana Stephens / Board Member

Dana Stephens foci surrounds understanding temporal and spatial shifts in aquatic ecosystems and relationships with natural and anthropogenic drivers. Dana received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from University of Florida in fisheries and aquatic sciences at the School of Forest Resources and Conservation and a B.S. from University of Wisconsin- Madison in biological conservation and zoology. Currently, Dana is the Director of the Mattie M. Kelly Environmental Institute at Northwest Florida State College with responsibilities in research, teaching, and service to the community. Dana has experience analyzing long-term water quality datasets, fish and vegetation assessments, sediment reconstruction of past environmental conditions, development of lake management plans, and teaching leadership skills to natural resource managers. She served on the North American Lake Management and the Florida Lake Management Society’s board of directors and contributed numerous presentations and publications to both organizations. In 2016, Dana was awarded the Florida Lake Management Society’s Young Professional Award presented to a lake management professional exhibiting professional accomplishments and a commitment to water resource protection and management of lakes and watersheds.

 

Ann St. Amand / Board Member

Email – astamand@phycotech.com

Phone – (269) 983-3654

Ann St. Amand holds a B.S. in Ecology, Evolutionary and Population Biology from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Aquatic Ecology from the University of  Notre Dame.  She has two years of post-doctoral experience at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences working on groundwater-surface water interactions in local industrial applications and in remote Montana alpine lakes.  She also served as co-Principal Investigator on an artificial stream project investigating interactions of PCB contamination with periphyton including effects on diversity, energy flow and food web effects.  She has over 30 years of experience identifying and enumerating over 42,000 algal samples from all over North America, using a unique proprietary mounting method.  Her company has completed programming on an extensive data management system containing information on nearly 34,000 different aquatic organisms, and they are bringing a new instrument online in June 2017 which will allow real-time algal analysis for water quality indicators and toxic algae.  She has been involved as an expert witness in Forensic and Ecological Impact investigations and also serves on two committees relating to public health issues surrounding toxic blue-green algae at the state level.  She has been the President and owner of PhycoTech, Inc since 1990.  She is an active reviewer and Associate Editor for the Journal of Lake and Reservoir. She has also received several business and technical awards. She belongs to numerous professional societies emphasizing algal ecology, taxonomy and lake management. She is Part Coordinator for Part 10000 and the Joint Task Group Chair for the Plankton Section, Biological Examination of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater.

 

F. Joan Hardy/Board Member

Email – nwaquaticecology@gmail.com

Joan is an aquatic specialist who worked as a toxicologist with Washington State for 28 years focusing on freshwater harmful algae blooms (HABs) in Washington lakes and human health risk assessments of toxic chemicals in fish. After receiving an MS (Limnology) and Ph.D. (aquatic toxicology) from the School of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, she was an NSERC Fellow with Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, in Vancouver and a research scientist at the Canadian National Hydrology Research Centre. While working on lakes in Alaska and British Columbia, she studied effects of nutrients on plankton community structure. Since nutrients are primary drivers of blooms and toxicity, her research evolved into investigation of factors associated with biotoxin production in temperate lakes. Her work with regional biologists on harmful algae examined the temporal extent and concentration of HABs in Washington lakes. She developed a lake management protocol and recreational guidance values for four cyanotoxins to provide guidance for lake managers and local health jurisdictions. Later she worked with local health jurisdictions and Washington State University to document the movement of HABs from freshwater lakes to marine waters of Puget Sound and to measure cyanotoxin bioaccumulation in caged marine mussels. The importance of preventing exposure to toxics or toxins is a foundation of environmental toxicology and public health. Education, outreach, and notification are essential to ensure information reaches those at risk. To address effectiveness of state and local education on HABs, Joan and colleagues ranked outreach methods used in Washington and incorporated effective actions into an outreach framework for use across the United States. Joan has been on the Washington Lakes Protection Association Board of Directors multiple times over the past several decades. Her current focus is on assessment of HAB education and outreach, exposure pathways for freshwater HABs to humans, and factors associated with toxic blooms.

 

 

Rob has more than 27 years of experience in conducting ecological evaluations of aquatic communities and water quality in streams and lakes throughout the United States and Canada. He has developed aquatic community health assessment tools like B-IBI and RIVPACS. He is actively managing and conducting ecological and surface water studies including: collection and description of benthic macroinvertebrate and periphyton communities, physical habitat, and sediment quality to determine impact of stormwater pollutants on aquatic communities, integrating biological information as thresholds for stormwater permits, description of current and past biological conditions in rivers and streams used to determine historical aquatic life uses and that influence designation of water quality criteria, toxicological impacts to receiving water biota, and numerical and conceptual biological modeling. Rob has been designing monitoring programs that meet requirements for compliance with permits, has considerable experience in developing technical documentation like Quality Assurance Project Plans for describing data quality to meet or exceed expectations of compliance monitoring, develops contaminant pathways models as guidance for monitoring program design, has prepared biological evaluations that satisfy requirements for project permitting under the Endangered Species Act, determined effectiveness of TMDL’s using water quality and biological information, and evaluating impacts to benthic communities from mining, forest practices and hydro activities.  Rob has directed multidisciplinary investigations and monitoring programs at larger basin scales and smaller watershed scales. Rob maintains expert skills in applied research including design and analysis of environmental data.