Amina Pollard is an American

limnologist Limnology ( ; ) is the study of inland aquatic ecosystems. It includes aspects of the biological, chemical, physical, and geological characteristics of fresh and saline, natural and man-made bodies of water. This includes the study of lakes, ...

and

ecologist Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...

at the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on De ...

(EPA). Pollard leads the U.S. EPA National Lakes Assessment, which seeks to provide information on the health of

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

pond A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression (geology), depression, either naturally or artificiality, artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing ...

s, and

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

s across the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. She currently serves on the

Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), formerly known as the Limnological Society of America and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, is a scientific society established in 1936 with the goal of advan ...

(ASLO) board of directors (2018-2021), chairs ASLO's annual awards committee, and is a scientific advisor to Canada's Lake Pulse research program.

Education and early career

Pollard received her BA from

Lawrence University Lawrence University is a Private college, private liberal arts college and Music school, conservatory of music in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1847, its first classes were held on November 12, 1849. Lawrence was the second colle ...

in 1995 and a

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

from

Wright State University Wright State University is a public research university in Fairborn, Ohio, United States. Originally opened in 1964 as a branch campus of Miami University and Ohio State University, it became an independent institution in 1967 and was named in ...

in 1997. In 2002, she received her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

Center for Limnology The Center for Limnology (CFL) is a research center within the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Established by the UW-Madison Board of Regents in July 1982, the mission of the center is to plan, conduct ...

under the supervision of John Magnuson and Thomas Frost. Pollard studied how the structure and connectedness of

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

s and

s affects

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

communities A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place (geography), place, set of Norm (social), norms, culture, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Ide ...

within those systems. She also measured the consequences of

dam removal Dam removal is the process of demolishing a dam, returning water flow to the river. Arguments for dam removal consider whether their negative effects outweigh their benefits. The benefits of dams include hydropower production, flood control, ir ...

on stream

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

invertebrate communities. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Pollard starting working for the EPA as a

postdoctoral fellow A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary academ ...

and has remained at the EPA her entire career.

Career

At the EPA, Pollard leads the National Lakes Assessment (NLA), a standardized and coordinated effort to sample lakes in the U.S. The NLA provides publicly available colocated biological, chemical, habitat, and human use metrics for representative lakes every 5 years starting in 2007. Comparing the 2007 and 2012 NLA sampling efforts allowed Pollard and her colleagues to determine that the proportion of "blue" lakes was declining while the proportion of "murky" lakes was increasing in the continental U.S. The increase in murky lakes - an indicator of poor water quality - was due to the combined effect of increased

eutrophication Eutrophication is a general term describing a process in which nutrients accumulate in a body of water, resulting in an increased growth of organisms that may deplete the oxygen in the water; ie. the process of too many plants growing on the s ...

and

dissolved organic carbon Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is the fraction of organic carbon Operational definition, operationally defined as that which can pass through a filter with a pore size typically between 0.22 and 0.7 micrometre, micrometers. The fraction remain ...

inputs from the

terrestrial environment An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecology, ecological and Geography, geographic area that exists on multiple different levels, defined by type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of la ...

. Pollard and colleagues also determined that the murky lakes were less efficient at transferring energy up the

food web A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Position in the food web, or trophic level, is used in ecology to broadly classify organisms as autotrophs or he ...

(to

zooplankton Zooplankton are the heterotrophic component of the planktonic community (the " zoo-" prefix comes from ), having to consume other organisms to thrive. Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents. Consequent ...

, for example), despite having the highest rates of

primary production In ecology, primary production is the synthesis of organic compounds from atmospheric or aqueous carbon dioxide. It principally occurs through the process of photosynthesis, which uses light as its source of energy, but it also occurs through ...

. The murky lakes also had the highest

concentration In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', '' molar concentration'', '' number concentration'', ...

microcystin Microcystins—or cyanoginosins—are a class of cyanotoxins, which are toxins produced by cyanobacteria, sometimes known as blue-green algae. Over 250 different microcystins have been discovered so far, of which microcystin-LR is the most commo ...

, which are a class of toxins produced by

cyanobacteria Cyanobacteria ( ) are a group of autotrophic gram-negative bacteria that can obtain biological energy via oxygenic photosynthesis. The name "cyanobacteria" () refers to their bluish green (cyan) color, which forms the basis of cyanobacteri ...

and are potentially

toxic Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance or a particular mixture of substances can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a subst ...

to human health in high enough concentrations. Pollard has also shown that combining national-scale datasets, such as the NLA, with local-scale data improves prediction accuracy of microcystin concentrations at the local level. Research by Pollard and colleagues has advanced our understanding of how

environmental change Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

and the structure of

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

s influence freshwater communities and ecosystems. Pollard led and contributed to work characterizing how the connections between

s, and

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

s within landscape mosaics control the movement and community structure of freshwater organisms. In a study exploring changing nutrient concentrations in freshwaters, Pollard and colleagues noted that both lakes and

s were increasing in total

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...

(TP) concentration in the continental U.S., another indicator of eutrophication, and the most notable increases were in relatively pristine catchments. Pollard also contributed to the U.S. EPA's Causal Analysis/Diagnosis Decision Information System (CADDIS) sections on analytical examples and

data analysis Data analysis is the process of inspecting, Data cleansing, cleansing, Data transformation, transforming, and Data modeling, modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Da ...

. CADDIS represents an ongoing effort to assist scientists, managers, and engineers conduct data-informed causal assessments to identify sources of impairment to aquatic organisms. In 2018, Pollard became the first

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

woman plenary speaker at the

annual meeting. She is currently the ASLO's Awards Chair. In 2021, Pollard became a candidate to become a "Member at Large" on the Board of Directors of

(ASLO).

Awards

* Friends of North American Lake Management Society Award. * Embassy Science Fellow in

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

* US EPA Science and Technology Achievement Award * US EPA Gold Medal for Exceptional Service In 2018, Pollard and the EPA NLA Team were nominated by Lisa Borre on behalf of the NALMS Government Affairs Committee for the Friends of North American Lake Management Society Award. Pollard and her team won the award for their coordinated effort with the EPA, states, tribes, federal agencies, and other organizations to implement the National Lakes Assessment (NLA), a large-scale statistical survey of the condition of our nation's lakes, ponds, and reservoirs.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollard, Amina People of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Women limnologists Lawrence University alumni Wright State University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni 21st-century African-American scientists African-American women scientists American women scientists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American limnologists 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics 21st-century African-American women