Research fellow, Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, School of Histories and Humanities

Research Interests

I am interested in the development of indicators and tools to assess the health of our aquatic ecosystems and in a broader scheme to find holistic ecosystem approaches in managing human use and therefore pressure on these precious systems. I am particularly interested in the structure and functioning of the communities that live in the aquatic environment and how resilient they are towards disturbance. Coming from the marine phytoplankton background the organisation and vigour of the phytoplankton community especially has my attention. My interest in phytoplankton developed while I studied Marine Environmental Sciences in Oldenburg, Germany. After completion of my MSc. on Helgoland, I successfully developed an index for detecting change in marine microplankton communities, largely in response to eutrophication during my PhD project in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the last four years as a post – doc I was project manager of an EFF project through DARD Northern Ireland investigating the energy transport of the marine food web and in a Defra funded project operationalising the Plankton Index (Gowen et al., 2011). I enjoyed my role as a scientific adviser to policy, industry and stakeholders that both projects required and hope I can pursue more outreach in this field in the future.

Revelant Publications and Outreach

• Scherer, C., Gowen, R. Tett P. 2015. Assessing the state of the plankton community: a case study in the western Irish Sea (to be submitted to Journal of Frontiers in Marine Science)
• R.J. Gowen, Y. Collos, P. Tett, C. Scherer, B. Bec, E. Abadie, M. Allen, T. O'Brien, 2015 Response of diatom and dinoflagellate lifeforms to reduced phosphorus loading: A case study in the Thau lagoon, France, 2015 Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Vol. 162: 45-52, ISSN 0272-7714, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2015.03.033.
• Scherer, C., Gowen, R., Tett, P. et al. 2014 Development of a UK Integrated Plankton Monitoring ProgrammeA final report of the Lifeform and State Space Project to Defra, December 2014 p. 1 - 86
• Scherer, C., Gowen, R.J., Tett, P., McQuatters-Gollop, A., Forster, R., Bresnan, E., Cook, K., Atkinson, A., Best, M., Baptie, M., Keeble, S., McCullough, G., McKinney, A., 2014. Finalising and implementing the development of plankton indicators and targets: Operationalising the Lifeform and State Space Method. Workshop report to Defra. Agri-food and Biosciences Institute, Belfast, p. 32.
• Gowen, R.J., Tett, P., McQuatters-Gollop, A., Forster, R., Scherer, C., Bresnan, E., Cook, K., Atkinson, A., Best, M., Baptie, M., Keeble, S. and McCullough, G., 2013. Part One of the UK Marine Strategy for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive: Plankton indicators: Development of the Life-form and State-Space Method. Defra, Belfast, 27 pp.
• Gowen R.J., McQuatters-Gollop A., Tett P., Best M., Bresnan E., Castellani C., Cook K., Forster R., Scherer C., McKinney A. 2011. The Development of UK Pelagic (Plankton) Indicators and Targets for the MSFD. A workshop report to Defra held at AFBI, Belfast 2nd – 3rd June 2011, 41pp
• Barr N.G., Kloeppel A., Rees T., Alwyn V., Scherer C, Taylor R.B., Wenzel A. 2008. Effects of water turbulence on growth and nutrient uptake in the green seaweed Ulva pertusa Aquatic Biology 3: 179-186
• Scherer C., Wiltshire K.H., Bickmeyer U. 2008. Inhibition of multidrug resistance transporters in the diatomThalassiosira rotula facilitates dye staining. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry 46: 100-103