Ashley Moerke

Ashley H. Moerke is an American ecologist and a professor at Lake Superior State University.^[1] Her research focuses on freshwater ecosystem management, especially around the Great Lakes. Moerke advises local and state governments and bi-national commissions on water science, fisheries, and other environmental issues. In 2020, she was chosen as president-elect of the Society for Freshwater Science.^[2]

Ashley Moerke
Alma mater	University of Minnesota Duluth (B.S.), University of Notre Dame (M.S., Ph.D.)
Scientific career
Institutions	Lake Superior State University

Education and early career

Moerke completed her Ph.D. in biology from the University of Notre Dame in 2004, after completing a master's degree at the same institution in 2000. Her graduate research was supervised by Gary Lamberti and focused on stream restoration. Moerke's research revealed complex impacts of restoration interventions, which in some cases led to a lack of desired changes in species assemblages.^[3] Moerke also highlighted that post-intervention monitoring is often neglected in restoration projects, and advocated for restoration approaches that explicitly consider human impacts at different spatial scales.^[4] Moerke's doctoral work received the President's Award from the North American Benthological Society.

Career

Moerke became an Assistant Professor at Lake Superior State University in 2004. She has won multiple teaching awards, and developed a service-based course on stream restoration in which students worked with a local conservation district on projects.^[5] In addition to her position as a professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Moerke was also the co-director of its Aquatic Research lab and is now the director of the university's Center for Freshwater Research and Education.

The St. Mary's River, deemed a Great Lakes Area of Concern due to its degraded environmental status, has served as the site of much of Moerke's research. Moerke has studied zooplankton, Lake Sturgeon, and Atlantic salmon in the river, as well as physical conditions such as sediment quality. This included contributing to a 2010 assessment of the river's biology and hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, concluding that ongoing shifts in the biological community had the potential to drastically alter the ecosystem if they continued.^[6] In 2015, she performed a baseline documentation of the Little Rapids section of the river for the Great Lakes Commission and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Moerke has also documented the positive effects of restoration on that section of the river, such as increased abundance and diversity of fish and benthic macroinvertebrates.^[7]

In parallel, Moerke has studied the ecology of fishes in Great Lakes tributaries, including the interaction between non-native, stocked Pacific salmon and native Brook trout,^[8] and the way that salmon transport pollutants in their bodies to their spawning grounds.^[9] Moerke's collaborations have revealed that the effects of these salmon on primary producers and nutrient dynamics in areas where they have been introduced differs from effects on stream ecology in their home ranges in the Pacific Northwest of North America.^[10]

Moerke has worked to develop metrics and indices of the biological condition of wetlands in the Great Lakes region^[11][12] as well as assessing invasive species in the wetlands.^[13]

In 2011, Moerke edited a special issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research devoted to the ecology of the St. Mary's River.^[14] Moerke was the lead author on a chapter of the textbook Methods in Stream Ecology.^[15]

Moerke has served as a scientific advisor to state and local governments, including on Michigan's Water Quality Advisory Committee. In 2018, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed her to the nine-member Environmental Science Advisory Board of Michigan's Department of Technology, Management, and Budget,^[16] and she is also an advisor to the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission.^[17]

In 2020, she was chosen for a three-year term on the Society for Freshwater Science's Executive Committee (one year each as President-Elect, President, and Past President)^[2] after previously serving in various roles for the society and its academic journal, Freshwater Science.

Awards

• Distinguished Professor, Lake Superior State University (2012)^[18]
• Distinguished Professor of the Year, Michigan Association of State Universities (2014)^[19]
• Justin W. Leonard Award of Excellence, Michigan chapter of the American Fisheries Society (2020)^[20]

References

1. "Meet CFRE Faculty and Staff". Lake Superior State University. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
2. "Moerke heads scientific group". saultstar. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
3. Moerke, Ashley H.; Lamberti, Gary A. (2003-08-01). "Responses in Fish Community Structure to Restoration of Two Indiana Streams". North American Journal of Fisheries Management. 23 (3): 748–759. doi:10.1577/M02-012. ISSN 0275-5947.
4. Moerke, Ashley H.; Lamberti, Gary A. (2004). "Restoring Stream Ecosystems: Lessons from a Midwestern State". Restoration Ecology. 12 (3): 327–334. doi:10.1111/j.1061-2971.2004.0340.x. ISSN 1526-100X. S2CID 14424344.
5. "Incorporating service learning into higher education to address water resource issues". nabs.confex.com. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
6. Bain, Mark K.; Arend, Kristin; Steinhart, Geoffrey; Moerke, Ashley; Varnakovida, Pariwate (2010-07-30). "St. Marys River Biological Status and Hydrologic Performance Indicators" (PDF). International Upper Great Lakes Study. Retrieved 2021-03-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
7. Molina‐Moctezuma, Alejandro; Ellis, Eric; Kapuscinski, Kevin L.; Roseman, Edward F.; Heatlie, Terry; Moerke, Ashley (2021). "Restoration of rapids habitat in a Great Lakes connecting channel, the St. Marys River, Michigan". Restoration Ecology. 29 (1): e13310. doi:10.1111/rec.13310. ISSN 1526-100X. S2CID 228935981.
8. Janetski, David J.; Moerke, Ashley H.; Chaloner, Dominic T.; Lamberti, Gary A. (2011). "Spawning salmon increase brook trout movements in a Lake Michigan tributary". Ecology of Freshwater Fish. 20 (2): 209–219. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0633.2010.00479.x. ISSN 1600-0633.
9. Janetski, David J.; Chaloner, Dominic T.; Moerke, Ashley H.; Rediske, Richard R.; O’Keefe, James P.; Lamberti, Gary A. (2012-08-07). "Resident Fishes Display Elevated Organic Pollutants in Salmon Spawning Streams of the Great Lakes". Environmental Science & Technology. 46 (15): 8035–8043. Bibcode:2012EnST...46.8035J. doi:10.1021/es301864k. ISSN 0013-936X. PMID 22770612.
10. Janetski, David J; Dominic T, Chaloner; Ashley H, Moerke; Peter S, Levi; Gary A, Lamberti (2013-12-14). "Novel environmental conditions alter subsidy and engineering effects by introduced Pacific salmon". Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 71 (4): 502–513. doi:10.1139/cjfas-2013-0292.
11. Cooper, Matthew J.; Lamberti, Gary A.; Moerke, Ashley H.; Ruetz, Carl R.; Wilcox, Douglas A.; Brady, Valerie J.; Brown, Terry N.; Ciborowski, Jan J. H.; Gathman, Joseph P.; Grabas, Greg P.; Johnson, Lucinda B. (2018-09-10). "An expanded fish-based index of biotic integrity for Great Lakes coastal wetlands". Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. 190 (10): 580. doi:10.1007/s10661-018-6950-6. ISSN 1573-2959. PMC 6133009. PMID 30203154.
12. Uzarski, Donald G.; Brady, Valerie J.; Cooper, Matthew J.; Wilcox, Douglas A.; Albert, Dennis A.; Axler, Richard P.; Bostwick, Peg; Brown, Terry N.; Ciborowski, Jan J. H.; Danz, Nicholas P.; Gathman, Joseph P. (2017-02-01). "Standardized Measures of Coastal Wetland Condition: Implementation at a Laurentian Great Lakes Basin-Wide Scale". Wetlands. 37 (1): 15–32. doi:10.1007/s13157-016-0835-7. ISSN 1943-6246.
13. Schock, Neil T.; Reisinger, Alexander J.; Reisinger, Lindsey S.; Cooper, Matthew J.; Cibrowski, Jan J. H.; Gehring, Thomas M.; Moerke, Ashley H.; Ruetz, Carl R.; Uzarski, Donald G. (2019-08-01). "Relationships between the distribution and abundance of the invasive faucet snail (Bithynia tentaculata) and environmental factors in Laurentian Great Lakes coastal wetlands". Biological Invasions. 21 (8): 2613–2628. doi:10.1007/s10530-019-02000-1. ISSN 1573-1464. S2CID 146807353.
14. "Journal of Great Lakes Research | Ecology of the St. Marys River | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier". www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
15. Moerke, Ashley H.; Ruetz, Carl R.; Simon, Troy N.; Pringle, Catherine M. (2017). "Macroconsumer–Resource Interactions". Methods in Stream Ecology, Volume 1. pp. 399–412. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-416558-8.00019-6. ISBN 978-0-12-416558-8.
16. "Professor Moerke appointed to state board". Sault Ste. Marie Evening News - Sault Ste. Marie, MI. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
17. "Great Lakes Fishery Commission - Advisors". www.glfc.org. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
18. "Distinguished Teaching Award". Lake Superior State University. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
19. "Awards and Recognition". Lake Superior State University. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
20. "Undercurrents: The Newsletter of the Michigan Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, February" (PDF). American Fisheries Society Michigan Chapter. February 2021. (PDF) from the original on 2021-05-12. Retrieved 2021-03-10.