Stephen R. Carpenter
Stephen Russell Carpenter is an American lake ecologist who focuses on lake eutrophication which is the over-enrichment of lake ecosystems leading to toxic blooms of micro-organisms and fish kills.
Early life
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, his father, Richard, a chemist, became the Director of the National Academies’ Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, so Carpenter was immersed in science at a young age. In his youth, Carpenter spent his summers on his grandfather's farm in Missouri. During this time he and his relatives enjoyed fishing, hunting and camping. “Hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting all come together in ecology,” he says. “I was really excited when I discovered there was a way to get paid for being a scientist outdoors.”Education
His interest in ecology was sparked during his undergraduate program at Amherst College. After his sophomore year, Carpenter worked for the summer on a survey of tree cover in Glacier National Park. Carpenter performed undergraduate research in the Fort River of Massachusetts on the primary production of macrophytes under the instruction of Stuart Fisher, an aquatic ecosystem scientist. He received a B.A. in biology in 1974 and then entered the graduate programs in Botany and Oceanography and Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he participated in the lab of Michael Adams to examine the role played by macrophytes in the phosphorus cycle of lake ecosystems. During his graduate years he met his wife, Susan Moths, whom he married in the same year he finished his doctoral dissertation, 1979.Career
He began a teaching career at the University of Notre Dame where he continued to work on lake research at the university's field station near Land O’ Lakes Wisconsin. Here he created a more broadly scoped study of lake ecosystems to include plants and animals and the food web. In 1982 he and Jim Kitchell began work on the trophic cascades Project, which involved the dynamics of the lake ecosystems. After 10 years spent at Notre Dame, he returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to a faculty position in the Center for Limnology and Department of Zoology. Madison had a strong limnology program allowing him to pursue other research including the accumulation of polychlorinated biphenyls in fish and invertebrates in Lake Michigan. He resumed work on the Madison lakes, including Lake Mendota, where his interest in the phosphorus cycle and eutrophication was renewed. His studies on the phosphorus cycle focused on nonpoint phosphorus pollution and how elevated phosphorus concentrations impacted the ecosystem of Lake Mendota. These investigations led Carpenter to devise strategies to manage the phosphorus cycle. By the mid-1990s he began to study the economics of eutrophication, in which he compared the benefits factories and farms receive by causing eutrophication to the benefits of keeping a lake clean and clear with the goal of maximizing the benefits on both sides. From 1999 to 2009 Carpenter led the at UW-Madison. In 2009 he became director of the UW-Madison Center for Limnology. In 2017 he retired as director in order to pursue research interests.Carpenter was on the Science Committee for the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society and the board for the Stockholm Resilience Centre. As of 2021, he is the co-editor in chief of the journal Ecosystems. In 2000-2005 he was co-chair of the Scenarios Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He led the North Temperate Lakes research site of the Long Term Ecological Research Network program at the University of Wisconsin in 1999-2009. He is a former president of the Ecological Society of America. As of 2011, Carpenter has published 5 books and about 450 scientific papers, book chapters, reviewed reports and commentaries.