Giri Kattel

I am an ecologist and palaeoecologist with expertise in management of lakes and rivers. My passion to work on freshwaters goes back to my childhood time. I grew up in a small village surrounded by rich natural lakes and rivers in the Nepal Himalaya. Following I had a Bachelor of Science degree from Nepal, my passion to learn freshwater sciences grew, and brought me to do an M.Sc. in Freshwater Ecology at the University of Otago (New Zealand). In my M.Sc., I focused my research on the dynamics of modern fish and zooplankton including cladocerans. However, I was deeply interested to understand the long term environmental change including climates and ecosystems of lakes and rivers. My research interests in environmental change in lakes and rivers brought me to do a PhD at the Environmental Change Research Centre of the Department of Geography of University College London (UK). Following PhD, I have been working in various countries, including the UK, New Zealand, Germany, Australia and China to extend my scientific endeavour in different parts of the world. Currently, I am a Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nanjing). Over the past 7 years, I have been working extensively in large river basins of Australia and Asia including the Murray, Yangtze and Mekong River basins. Lately I was awarded the Australia-China Science and Research Fund from the Government of Australia to study resilience of the Murray and Yangtze River basins. Currently, I am one of the international partner investigators of the key National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) project “Resilience of the Yangtze River Basin”

November 2016