Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant over at Purdue University. And I am joined today by absolutely nobody because of a last meeting, last minute scheduling conflict. But that's okay, I can rock it solo, I can do this. I can talk by myself, don't worry, we'll have a guest. In fact, not only do we have a guest, we have a great guest, our guest today. Her name is Dr. SETNA Sharma. She's an associate professor in the Department of Biology and the York Research Chair of global change biology at York University. And she's fascinating. I love this. I'll give you a hint, little little behind the scenes everybody loves behind the scenes. I'm recording this after the interview. And we had a really nice conversation. I think she's a fascinating, fascinating in the work she does, spans the scale from like individual fish all the way up to these global questions. And so we're going to talk about that. How do you make that transition, we're going to talk about Lake ice. And it's important. And she has some really interesting things that I hadn't even thought about when it comes to the importance of Lake ice. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. But first, we got a couple things going on. So let's talk about them. All right. The first is the Lakers. Don't forget about the Lakers. So this is our end of Year award ceremony. And I'm going to stop talking about this soon. So time is running out. I want you to go to bitly.com/lakers 21 Li K I D s 21. to nominate some things for the Lakers, right? We have a lot of categories, science communicator of the communication of the error Outreach Program of the Year, coolest thing you've learned listening to teach me about the Great Lakes of the year. Go nominate some for that. And today I'm going to feature actually one of the other ones we have is Great Lakes news event of the year and we've got some interesting things in there. But the one that I want to talk about is that Great Lakes drownings are up this year. And so I put this as a little bit out there. It's a story from earlier in the year but it was about the number of drownings and if you recall, we featured this water safety way back in episode 32. Episodes called what had been safe is now dangerous. We spoke with Chris Houser of the University of Windsor about the effects of COVID-19 on beach drownings. And we also spoke with Meg Dotson about water safety. We re aired that one around July 4 holiday episode 35 teach me about the great lakes.com/three Five. And the reason I mentioned that is you know today's a beautiful fall day. But people are still out at the lakes and they're you know, the weather is starting to get a little bit weird. Be safe out there. Right? Please recreate the lakes. But gosh, some of the stuff you see, these things are killer. Right? These things are really killer. And actually, if you go listen to that, literally killer. If you listen to that episode with Meg, again, teach me about the great lakes.com/ 35 She talks about some of what goes into making the Great Lakes such a kind of surprisingly dangerous place to swim if you don't know what's going on. If you're careful and thoughtful, great fun. But if you're less careful and less thoughtfully, it can be bad, so I recommend checking that out. Teach me about the great lakes.com/three Two for episode 32 What had been saved as no dangerous, and then teach me about the great lakes.com/thirty 535 The title there is most weather weenies will probably remember. So this is a really big news. It's not necessarily good news. But it is big news, when the Leakey you'll have to tune in in December to find out. And so one of the things we're going to Hector you about this might be the last time because we're about to record it is we have our book club coming up, right? We're reading, death and life, the Great Lakes by Dan Egan, definitely in the Great Lakes by Dan Egan. And it's a really fascinating book that I've enjoyed, but we want your feedback. So here's what you can do. call our hotline, which is 765496. I SG call that hotline and insert one of two questions for us. One is what was something that you read about in that book that was surprising? anything surprising in death and life in the Great Lakes? And then the second thing is that you may be able to say is there anything in there that you found to be enraging? We want to know is there anything in there that enraged you? If so, go ahead and leave a voicemail about that. And either of those, if you leave a good voicemail, we'll go ahead and play it on the air. We're excited about that. So it gets your voice on the air people you can tell your mom or your grandma or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your partner. Everybody wants to be on TV about the Great Lakes and this is your chance to do it. So I recommend you do it. Anyway, that is enough of that. So I do want to introduce today's guest who will come on after transitional music and her name is Dr. Sapna Sharma and she is the Associate Professor in the Department of Biology in New York Research Chair global change biology at York University in Toronto. And we're super lucky to speak with her and first let of course play the appropriate music and then we'll start the conversation.

Researcher A researcher teaches about the great lakes. All right, good. You're at the York University. Charity global change biology. Yep. But you got your start in like fish stuff. Right. This was what's interesting about your career as I was looking at it looked like was your was that your master's thesis? Maybe I was looking at smallmouth bass assemblages. Is that right?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 5:21
Oh, that was my PhD. Yeah. No. My master's I did on Lake Erie and wildlife populations in Lake Erie, Eastern Lake Erie and, and some water quality stuff back then.

Stuart Carlton 5:35
So were you did you come into that through? Like, really like a fish kid growing up? You know, it seems like there's a couple different types of people who do fish stuff, those who really loved fish, or those who are like, are more interested in kind of the ecology and number side of it, and you're using fishes, like a test species, or whatever is a study species, which which angle were you coming from with walleye into my mouth?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 5:55
I'm from the number side. So I've always been interested in climate change. Yeah, I remember I even did like the grade seven science fair project on climate change back when it was like

not even talked about climate change. Chipster. Yeah.

And I love numbers and patterns with numbers. So I'm, like, interested in it from the stats perspective. But I did my PhD and my master's on fish. And my first postdoc, one part of it was on fish, and it was going veering towards more statistics. And then I went to the Center for limnology, in Wisconsin for a postdoc, and they just got me off fish and hooked onto limnology and get hooked

Stuart Carlton 6:39
on limnology not on fish. Right. So then how did you get fish originally? Was that just that's what was available to you? No, because like I my master's in fisheries biology, actually, I'm not social scientists now. But I really like field trips. And so there was a master student position available after I was an English major of all things. And, and so I just took that it was like, sure what the heck, I'll go do fish stuff for a bit, I guess when So was it available? Or? Or how did you get sort of that?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 7:06
I guess I was, uh, so the Master's project, I think was in combination with the Ministry of Environment in Ontario. And it was like, had a water quality angle to it. I grew up like close to Lake Erie. And, and one of the tributaries of Grand River. I grew up on the Grand River. And I thought, Okay, well, this seems like it could be useful working, like with the Ministry of Environment, working on water quality, and fish, it just seemed like, like, there were other projects I was exploring for a master's. But this seemed like the most useful kind.

Stuart Carlton 7:42
Oh, so you had it down from like, day one, then even going into your masters that you had kind of this trajectory in mind of looking for something to be useful?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 7:49
Well, I come from an immigrant family. So we don't do things just for fun.

Stuart Carlton 7:58
So do you feel like that's been an influence? And is sort of that we don't do things for fun? Well, why not? I guess what is the what is,

Dr. Sapna Sharma 8:04
that was just a joke. No, but like, I like numbers. And I wanted, I didn't want to get a job after I got a master. So I really liked Behavioral Ecology, but I couldn't see myself getting a master's in Behavioral Ecology and chasing squirrels afterwards, which is what I did during my undergrad. So I was trying to be a bit more pragmatic. And then it really was like, the statistical ecology and of things that interest me. So then

Stuart Carlton 8:39
menu, you have moved to a much larger so you started with, you know, like small mouth bass assemblages, right, in small scale areas, and you've really moved much bigger scale really quickly, it seems like to me, you know, if you look at your Google Scholar, which I assume contains at least most of what you've done, like, it's like small mouth bass, and then within, I don't know, two years, you're on these global size projects already, practically. So was that that was an intentional thing by you to try to do bigger work, or was it just kind of following a thread?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 9:07
Yeah. So like I said, I started off with walleye and Lake Erie. And I remember going through the review process, and they eat. The comments were typically like, Oh, this is just one part of one lake. Is this really a widespread issue or whatever? And I thought, Okay, well, during my PhD, I thought, Okay, I need to get more lakes then if I'm gonna do this. And so then I started looking for data and I found 20,000 lakes in Canada that I found fish community data for water temperatures, and, and all that and I thought, Okay, well, 20,000 Lakes seems like a good number. It's bigger than one. And so actually, like, yeah, I was totally doing big data before it was cool. And I did it all by hand. So I didn't do it. Like I wasn't coding

Stuart Carlton 10:00
Right, you weren't like hitting the API for access to this stuff. How do you do 20,000? Likes by hand? What did you have to do?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 10:06
Well, I had to go through like people's drawers and go to their paper sheets to some of them would say, Hey, you can come over and go through our drawers. And then I would digitize it for them. So it was sort of a win win. And, you know, other things, like, I would just manually put it all together. But it worked. It took some time, but it worked. And that was where I started doing some of these, like, it was more candidates. So small, both paths work is Canvas scale. And, and then from there, you know, just like, Well, why limit myself?

Stuart Carlton 10:49
Yeah, so are there. So I'd be fighting to make this transition thinking about scale? Are there trade offs cited kind of in the bigger scale work that you do? I mean, obviously, there's a lot of data requirements. And you know, the computational requirements are harder, but are there in terms of like, the types of questions you can ask or problems you can address? Or their pros and cons? Or do you see it all as like pros working on these big, you know, nation, or even global questions,

Dr. Sapna Sharma 11:12
I think is like, as a field, we need both types of people, we need the global people and the local scale people. But for me, personally, as a scientist, I prefer the global scale. Because as I said, I'm really interested in patterns and drivers of change. And, you know, you can understand and one lake what might happen, but you get much, much broader perspective of like how different lakes work, how are they, you know, a lake in Scandinavia, and a lake in Wisconsin might be behaving very similarly. And so what are the drivers behind that? So I find that really interesting. Like, I like knowing that, like, lakes right next to each other are not behaving in the same way. But they may be behaving similarly to lakes, like, across the ocean. And I find that pretty interesting. I also feel like for me, I like working on different topics. So you probably noticed that about me that I don't just work. You know, I just don't work on fish. I don't even just work on Lake ice lake ice is my favorite thing that I do. But I don't work on I work on water temperatures and water quality and ecosystem dynamics and, and fish because I, I think that's just the type of person I am like, I just need to keep doing different things, and try new things and trying to uncover some of the general patterns. And like some scientists are more what their strengths are thinking about the mechanistic drivers, and thinking about the fine scale patterns. And so I feel like for science as a whole to really understand driver understanding of how climate change invasive species affects lakes, you need both types of people. And I figured why don't I just do the thing that I am happy doing? Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 13:06
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot, though. It's been a real. So Sophia, like I said, I'm come from a social science background now are human dimensions of our life was like when my attorney was in. And there's a lot of small questions that people address her. And it's good. It's important. A lot of times it's management driven, or problem driven. But but you know, when I talk to people who do your kind of work, I'm always like, there's got to be a bigger scale approach that we can be taking. But making that leap, I just, frankly, I can't I struggle to do it to think about broad questions that are field relevant to me. So I'm really impressed that you've made that sort of move, although it sounds like you were kind of planning it from from the start.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 13:40
It's just something that I find so interesting. The other thing that I get to do with all this large scale work is I get to talk to a lot of different people and learn about their local systems and meet different people who might be contributing data. And that's something I enjoy. Like, I'm an extrovert, I like talking to people. And I like hearing their stories and their backgrounds and stuff like that. So that's a way for me to incorporate that into my research, rather than just being behind the computer. Or

Stuart Carlton 14:12
you see there's the differences is almost all social scientists are horrible introverts who have deep seated mistrust and hatred for all people.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 14:19
I just heard too. Yeah, I am definitely this. This pandemic has been challenging, I think for extroverts.

Stuart Carlton 14:27
Yeah. I mentioned it has. Yeah, so what's your kind of work? It's a lot of data analysis, but there's their fieldwork component or is it is largely downloading stuff. Not I don't want to I'm sorry, I don't mean like, you know, is it largely stuff you can get data from from elsewhere? I

Dr. Sapna Sharma 14:39
guess. Well, a lot of that data I do get is it's, there's you know, some people have done field work, right. So I might not have gone to the field with them, but they did. And they might have collected data for their three lakes or something, but their three lakes become part of my 1000s of lakes. I get a lot of data actually, just by calling people emailing. I feel like that's my field work. It's that human connection,

Stuart Carlton 15:10
you are a social scientist.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 15:13
Yeah, I think some scientists would call that field work. And then some of it is like scraping, scraping the internet and papers and stuff like that.

Stuart Carlton 15:23
So then have you found a slowdown related to the pandemic? Or is it still been pretty much full speed ahead, since you don't have to go into the field anyway?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 15:29
It is, well, a lot of my research was done online before anyways, when you're working with people from all sorts of all areas of the world. So that part has just continued. There's been slowdowns, obviously, related to the fact that, you know, I have a child who hasn't been in school.

Stuart Carlton 15:51
I'm very aware of those slowdowns. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 15:53
So I think anyone who's a who's a parent has experienced slowdowns during this pandemic. But there's also been

Stuart Carlton 16:02
more fun. So is this driven, you're not the pandemic, but thinking about all the work you do. And you're calling people and getting data? I see a couple of things out there where you've actually, you know, assembled databases that are available to other researchers now, right? It's, is that all related to that same interest and just asking big questions, and maybe even the struggle that you had in graduate school? To find stuff? Did that make you want to then put more things out there for other scientists? Or what led to them?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 16:25
Yeah, I think it's like, important for so many different reasons to make it available. Because for me, like, I feel like as a field, as someone who studies, climate change, and climate change impacts, we we really need to benefit from all sorts of different people and perspectives and experiences, tackling these questions, if we're going to actually get to an answer for society, on how to mitigate, like these climate change impacts. So um, so for me, it's important to get data out there, because that means more people will be thinking about it in different ways we can, as a field, we will make make some improvements. And secondly, for me, it's also an important equity issue. Because, you know, if you're not part of that boys club, you may not have access to data, and you do not make you do not have access to the same amount of data. And so from an equity perspective, I think releasing data open access makes it available to anyone,

Stuart Carlton 17:35
especially I hadn't thought about it in quite those terms. We talked about that a lot. So we find some research that I don't know, I don't know, if you know much about see grant programs who are Wisconsin, but but you're up in Toronto, right? We don't have of course. So part of what we do is we fund research, we have research competitions, and everything has to be matched 50%, you know, 50 cents on $1. That's part of our legislation or federal legislation that that and and we talk a lot about how that's an equity issue also, in that the people who are most likely to have the ability to match that are going to be the people at the you know, the major research universities, and we're going to be disproportionately look like a cleaner cut version of me essentially. Right? And suddenly, we talked about I hadn't thought about data that way do you find within your field, so my field making data available is rare? And I think I hadn't thought about the equity. But I think it's an issue in terms of scientific integrity and all sorts of other things. In your field, is it more common to make this stuff available? Are you kind of a trailblazer there? In the same way, you're a trailblazer on climate change, and big data and stuff like that,

Dr. Sapna Sharma 18:33
um, it's, it's not common, but there is a movement towards it, I think in the US, US has been the global gold standard on making data available in Canada, we are terrible. So actually, very few of my projects actually focus on Canadian links, because they're open access data. And data sharing is not as easy here as it is in the US. And so I feel like it's important to lead by example. And also, you know, there has been here, a lot of people say, Well, I can't share my data, because I was going to write a paper on it. And now somebody else is going to write this paper on it. But I think being in Wisconsin at the Center for limnology, which hosts the North temperate lakes ltr, they really stressed the importance of sharing data as soon as it's available, because, you know, if you're going to be working on it, hopefully you're going to be collaborating with others who want to learn more about how what this data mean. And regardless, you're you're still making a contribution to the ecological like our society. So for me, I don't really buy that argument.

Stuart Carlton 19:54
Seems easy, right? Right to say that that's like a nice easy default position or a lot of times the IRB won't allow it And IRB will allow it usually you just have to be thoughtful about it. So yeah, no, I hear you on that. So let's talk a little bit more in more specifics about your research you say that you've done like a lot of work on Lake ice is what you're passionate about. Right? And we've had a conversation or two about Lake ice before but I don't know a ton about I'm from the south, we don't you know, only ice we got to sit in that refrigerator. So like ice this comes to the Great Lakes during the winter, right, the cold of winter, they turn the lakes partially I don't think none of them get totally encased in ice but but a lot of ice right. And and, and that's changing. So why is is that's an important part of the cycle is my understanding. Is that correct? And if so, what's important about that?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 20:37
Yeah, so Linkous is so important for so many reasons. So I can start with ecologically wildly important. So Lake ice, you can kind of think about it as a lid on the lake in winter. So it prevents evaporation, higher evaporation rate. So in yours, when lakes don't have to have ice, those lakes will have higher evaporation, and less freshwater, which is really important to all of us since we need fresh water to survive. The other thing it does is, in years, when you don't have Lake ice, or if Lake ice breaks up earlier in the spring, you end up getting warmer water temperatures and the lake earlier onset of thermal stratification, warmer water temperatures in the summer, and then higher primary production and a higher likelihood of algal bloom, some of which might be toxic. And so ecologically, ice is just so important in governing what happens in the winter, but also what happens in the spring and following summer. Culturally. So you're from the south, so it's not as big of a deal. But I'm in Toronto. And culturally, it's super ice is super important for us. So for example, ice hockey, ice skating, recreation, ice fishing, we have multi multimillion, billion dollar industries that are revolve around ice recreation. We also have winter ice roads. So our northern communities, particularly indigenous communities, don't have access, they don't have road access to their communities. And so they need winter ice roads, to actually get access to food and resources and social connections. Culturally, it's also important for some religions. So my favorite lake to study is Lake Suwa, in Japan, and its ice record goes back to 1443. And it was started and continued to be maintained by Shinto priests. So for them, it's part of their local tradition, to as a community to observe what's happening with with Legos. So it's a big part of the social fabric of northern countries. And that's why we can get data that go back so far. Because it's, it's been an important component for life.

Stuart Carlton 23:05
Hold on, I have 10 things to ask about this. So that's amazing. So I hadn't thought about the cultural importance. I mean, it's totally true. My knowledge of ice fishing extends to one episode of Letterkenny and one episode of The Anthony Bourdain show where he goes with these students who are cooking really amazing food somewhere and in their little shack while ice fishing, but I hadn't thought about this cultural importance, in addition to the ecological importance, that's that's just it's mind blowing to think about. And so with, but what you're talking about really is incorporating traditional ecological knowledge then right into your big data projects. So let's ask about that. Don't worry, go back to Lagos. Is that like a challenge? Or how do you do that? Exactly.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 23:42
So I want I didn't think about that as a traditional ecological knowledge. But that's, that's totally true. And to how do I do that I, it's, again, by calling it's a social capital, right? And just calling and emailing each winter to see Hey, when did your link freeze did your lake freeze this year? What date and that's just how, how I get data. So I kind of trivialize it by saying, Okay, I called somebody but really, it's a lot of effort when you do this for hundreds to 1000s of lakes to actually keep track of, of what what is going on with the ice. And then we do make that available open access. So we just put up the ice record till what we have now for anybody to use for like over 500 lakes.

Stuart Carlton 24:35
And so you found that the ice extents or it can change any given year, but basically they're reducing like is the big picture, right? Because of climate change. Is that is that the case?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 24:44
Yeah. So what we're finding is that in the fall, winter, ice is forming later. It's breaking up earlier in the spring. And then in some years, actually we're seeing lakes that aren't freezing at all and likely You heard of that happening is actually increasing quite rapidly. And so overall, we're experiencing shorter isolation or no, no isolation. It's pretty cool. I had a paper accepted this week, where were we updated the trends and ice loss from what John Magnussen did at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2000. And adding 25 years worth of more data is just mind blowing, because we're seeing the trends and ice loss about six times faster in the last 25 years. So in terms of shorter ice duration, and for example, Lake Superior working, you're talking about the Great Lakes. So we've been following the ice records from Bayfield. Bay and Lake Superior since 1867. Since that time period, there's been over two months less ice cover, Lake Superior, which is, you know, in a in a pretty cold place, since 1997, has not frozen four times. Wow. So like, yeah, we're seeing really, really rapid changes of warming. And we're seeing this and other large deep lakes as well, or as lakes in the southern part.

Stuart Carlton 26:17
So we've got four times that's that's, like 20%, nearly of almost 20% of the time since 97, that it doesn't freeze. Wow, is that right? That are close enough? That's a wow, that's, that's something else. So and so the effects of this, so then I can surmise is that all those things we're talking about that are the value of Lake ice. Those are affected in different ways, right? Both ecological impacts, the social well being impacts in terms of changes in weather, but not least cultural things to which I hadn't thought about.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 26:48
And we're looking at trying to look at like economic impacts, too. So for example, like an ice fishing tournament, and Minnesota will bring in 800,000 US dollars to a small community in a weekend, which those tournaments are increasingly being canceled with warmer weather.

Stuart Carlton 27:07
Yeah, I can imagine. Oh, jeez, that's horrible. And then it but a lot of this is baked in at this point. I mean, so you know, when you talk about climate change, right? Climate change if it's not resolved, but like, how much of this is baked in? And it's just the way it is? Or how much of the, you know, what option? Well, not options, but how bad is it gonna get? And what can we do? And what can we still stop from happening, I guess, would be kind of way to think about it.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 27:30
Yeah, so we've been doing a lot of forecasts into the future of how climate change may affect ice in the in the future. And if we, you know, we continue on a terrible path of increased greenhouse gas emissions, we could see about 5700 Lakes permanently lose ice cover. And so permanently losing ice cover has huge, huge consequences on like the freshwater supply and the water quality of the lakes. If we mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, by 2030s, we estimate only 179. Lakes, ice because ice is so sensitive to air temperatures and air temperatures are so sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions. And that's what why ice is so awesome to work with, because it integrates the weather and climate so well. It's clear, you need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to preserve ice cover, which will consequently preserve our freshwater supply.

Stuart Carlton 28:30
And so that those are those are big, big scale things. So those are things that have to do with you know, voting for the right people. And I of course, as a public employee, we're not telling you how to vote, nor should i In fairness, but but right, there are choices you can make, right, in terms of if that's important to you who to getting involved in the democratic process getting involved in the democratic process. Yep. Yeah. Getting involved, period, you know, voting with your dollars Council ought to? Yeah. Oh, well, that is scary. But it's fascinating work that you you're talking about here. And I noticed actually looking at Yeah, we spoken with one of your co authors before, Maria Dietrich, I believe is her name about this paper you did. Scientists warning for humanity looking at, you know, what, what all these big lakes can tell us about our condition. So if you had to say like your work, kind of in some what is like the big theme of your work lately in terms of what it's telling us about, you know, lakes in general, the Great Lakes specific whatever you think?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 29:24
That's a good question. I would say what I've learned is that we're at a critical tipping point right now. Where our ecosystems are changing. They're changing pretty rapidly, and the consequences of which are much more much more extreme than just thinking about ice in general. It's like freshwater quantity, water quality supply, cultural changes, we actually even documented number of drownings of people through ice. So human health And we have a lot of a lot of data to support the fact this is a great thing about working on large scales and working on on different topics. Because you can get like a, an overview, right? Like, we know that all of these, these factors are changing. And they're changing rapidly, especially within the last quarter century. And we are at this tipping point right now where we have to sort of start making tough decisions as a society, like where are we going to go in the next five to 10 years? Are we going to continue ourselves on this trajectory? Or, and, you know, deal with the ramifications, which are going to be way more expensive than just dealing with mitigating climate change, both economically but in terms of our ecosystem health, our stewardship of our land of human life? Or are we going to say, we're going to do something about this, this is important. And, and I think that's sort of what all my research is sort of culminating to show is that we're changing rapidly, and we're changing much faster than what we would have predicted even 10 years ago. And so it's time to do something about it.

Stuart Carlton 31:18
This is really interesting stuff. And your research is, is really fascinating. And a lot of it is very accessible, I think to none, you know, so I recommend people go and read it. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invite you on teach me about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. And the first one of the is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 31:42
I would choose the great donut for breakfasts,

Stuart Carlton 31:45
right? Donut, Team donut,

Dr. Sapna Sharma 31:47
I love dessert. And to breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So you might start your day with on a high note.

Stuart Carlton 31:55
a sugar high note. Yeah. That's, that's wonderful. So when I go to Toronto, because I want to visit the biggest city in the Great Lakes, where should I go to get a really great doughnut?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 32:06
Well, in Canada, we have Tim Hortons. So that's like the accessible donut. But we have this cool street called Queen Street. And there's a bunch of, you know, smaller establishments. And a King Street we have great food actually in Toronto, and great bakeries, and just a lot of diversity in food. So I guess I would choose gloryhole donuts as the place to go. It's like a little place on Queen Street. But if if not Tim Hortons,

Stuart Carlton 32:42
no, no girl donuts is great. I will put a link in the show notes listeners so that you don't have to google glory holder. If you do Google it with donuts. Make sure to include the donuts profits for a while. Who knows you have not done that. Yeah. Have you done a Corona is a Corona is a Corona? Yeah, I have not had it seems like there's got to be like a border that you do not cross. A man has to have a code. Okay, great. And the second question is this. So so we have like a Great Lakes oriented audience. Now, you know, we have people all over the world, but we're focused on the Great Lakes. And so we'd like to share our special places in the Great Lakes with our audience. Is there one that you have that's a special place? And if so, what makes it special?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 33:19
For me, it's Toronto, so and Toronto's on Lake Ontario, and I actually grew up in a small town called Brantford, Ontario, which is on the Grand River that goes into Lake Erie. Because it's the home of Wayne Gretzky. That's what we're, we're known for bringing back the relevance to ice hockey in Toronto for me was like, always, like the fun place to go. I've lived in many different places because of my education and research. But for me, this is home and it's such an awesome city. There's so many neighborhoods, it's such a big city, but it's safe. There's lots of little neighborhoods, and and lots of amazing food because Toronto is so diverse. We have like the most number of people from a specific country, coming to Toronto and creating neighborhoods and opening restaurants and having festivals and like, you know, celebrating an immersion embracing diversity is an important part of the city. And of course, I love the Toronto Raptors. So

Stuart Carlton 34:23
a couple years removed from a championship too.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 34:26
So there you go. I know it was amazing. It was amazing. I've been going to their game since day one.

Stuart Carlton 34:31
Have you look at this. Well, you've sold me on Toronto. Absolutely. And I'll go to I'll go to Queen Street. I'll go to King Street. I'm donuts. It's all good. It's all good. I can ice fish. Oh, that sounds great. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about for we Buzz off? Are we good?

Dr. Sapna Sharma 34:48
No. I think we're good. I guess the only thing I would have wanted to talk about was hearing more about you but it's

Stuart Carlton 34:53
well. I love to talk about me. No this is interesting. This is this is really good work that you do. And yeah, moving to those bigger questions. That's the thing that I that's like my weakness has a reason. You know, I'm an administrator largely, but I do some research too. I have Research Assistant Prof position, and I've done some climate work like I was part of. I've done some of that climate consensus stuff, you know, those big groups? Oh, yeah, yeah. And so I wasn't part of the original paper, but they did a follow up paper, like a consensus of consensus type paper. And so I had done some work and looking at scientists belief in climate change. Turns out they do even were wondering if, like physicists and chemists Did you know, like, or maybe they're like, Well, no, I'm a physicist. I know, you can't model that. So climate, but no, they all believe in climate change. So

Unknown Speaker 35:38
we have two climate change deniers at my university and science. One is in physics, and one is in Chemistry.

Stuart Carlton 35:44
Yeah, well, I think it might be more likely, but actually, actually the field that had the fewest percentage of people. So we surveyed scientists, basically, every department across the big 10, which was 12 universities that the time and Natural Resources had the smallest, or the largest percentage, and still very small of people who didn't believe that climate change was happening. And I don't remember, it's been a couple of years, but it was about even there was in the high 80s, you know, people who believed in Yeah, and we found signal like, we didn't have enough data to really show this but we found signal that a lot of I mean, the even among scientists, it tends to be like cultural values. That drives it. You know, people who are more sort of hierarchical and more sort of individualistic are more likely to not believe in climate change. And people are more II, egalitarian and communitarian, are more likely to be concerned about and believe in climate change, even among scientists, which I thought was interesting. So it's like, well, yeah, pretty. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how much values can influence what we do, I guess, even even among, you know, supposedly rational scientists,

Dr. Sapna Sharma 36:46
that it's those values sort of permeate?

Stuart Carlton 36:50
Well, this is a really interesting stuff. And I've really enjoyed talking with you. Where can people go if they want to find out more about you and your work?

Unknown Speaker 36:57
You can go to my lab website, which is Sharmalab.wordpress.com

Stuart Carlton 37:00
Sharmalab.wordpress.com. And I will put a link to that in the shownotes, which you can find at teach me about the great lakes.com/oh My goodness, which episode is this? I think it's 43. So episode Yes, no 42 Excuse me slash 42. Because this is episode 42. Well, Doctor is happening. The Sharma Associate Professor, Department of Biology, the York Research Chair of global change biology at York University. Thank you so much for coming on, and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Sapna Sharma 37:30
Thanks for having me, it was fun.

Stuart Carlton 37:38
Well, it's a really great conversation, I hope you all enjoyed that. She is a clever woman. And I think it's when you look at the breadth of what she's done, and how easily she scaled up from, you know, individual fish populations to Lake wide assemblages, to all the way to you know, really working on global issues related to climate and whatever, it's very impressive, the person who can do that. And then on top of that, the way that she's a real leader in terms of thinking about equity and diversity, and also thinking about making public data available to the public, really impressive. So I am super glad to have been able to speak with her. So again, I would like you all to take a minute Evanescence for awhile. So if you if you have a minute, once you give us a rating or review, or you can just go in your podcast app or whatever, just give us a five star review. And if you have already done that, thank you for that. Give us another one who cares. And if you don't want to do that, then maybe you can subscribe if you haven't, or ask a friend to subscribe, because we do love our listeners. And then the only thing I want to remind you about is next is the very soon rather is our book club. So if you have a thought on Danny and Stephen life in the Great Lakes called leave it on the hotline, we'll play it on the show probably at 765496 I SG that I believe it's 4474. And it's one of these two questions. First of all, what was the most surprising thing in death and life in the Great Lakes to you? Or secondly, if you instead would like to tell us what is the most infuriating thing in death and life in the Great Lakes. So what are your what what surprised you or what infuriated you leave that on our hotline at 765496 I SG and we might play it on the show. And with that, I will do the thing and then we'll do the thing. Let's see here we go. Teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant we encourage you to check out the great work that we do at ai secret.org Or at i l i n secret on Facebook, Twitter or other social media such as Instagram, or as I call it Insta teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters Carolyn Foley Meghan Gunther Remi miles Ethan Chitty. He is our associate producer and our fixer are super fun podcast artwork by Jill Davenport. The show is edited by the new amazing, awesome Quinn rose, and you should check out her work at aspiring robot.com. And you have a question, maybe a comment about the show when you send us an email. Teach me about the Great Lakes at hotmail Nope, not at hotmail. What is this 1998 teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com You can leave us a message on the aforementioned hotline. It's 765496 is G for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. You can also follow the show on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes if you want and do it. Why not? It's fun. See, the people we follow to we follow up pretty much every guest who has a Twitter we follow. So now I'm learning as much from that as I do from doing the show, actually. So go ahead, follow us on Twitter. It won't hurt I promise. Anyway for store Carlton. I am Stuart Carlton. Thanks for listening and keep greatin' those lakes!