UNR professor battles alien species at Lake Tahoe
By Jeff Delong, Reno Gazette-Journal
Don’t call him a fish guy.
It’s not that he doesn’t know a lot about fish. He does. He knows about big ones and little ones. He knows a lot about ones that are swimming where they should be and those that are living where they should not.
But as a professor of limnology at University of Nevada, Reno, Sudeep Chandra’s knowledge of inland water systems — lakes, rivers, streams and estuaries — extends far beyond its scaled denizens.
“You can say it’s inland oceanography,” Chandra said of a specialty that involves biology, physics, geology and chemistry, among other things.
“You have to study a little bit of everything,” said Chandra, 36. “We focus a little bit on all of these things.”
Chandra’s work takes him to many faraway locations — places like Mongolia and Bhutan, Guatemala and the Siberian Arctic.
But in 2010, much of Chandra’s attention was focused close to home — to Lake Tahoe, a national treasure threatened by a frightening invasion of non-native fish and shellfish that could profoundly impact the landmark alpine lake. Chandra’s work at Tahoe and other Nevada lakes this year earned him an award of excellence from the American Fisheries Society, the group’s highest honor.
