STUDY OF LAKES

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30563, 5 October 1964, Page 16

STUDY OF LAKES

Biologist From U.S. Natural lakes in the South Island will be studied this summer by an American biologist, described as the foremost world authority •in his special field of teaching and research. He is Dr. Edward Deevey, professor of biology at Yale University. With his wife, Dr. Georgiana Deevey, a research associate at the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory, he will arrive’ in New Zealand on Friday to take up headquarters at Canterbury Uhi versity, where he will also lecture in his special subjects. These are ' limnology (lake study) and ecology (the harmony of living organisms and their environment). Dr. Deevey intends to observe differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the effects of climatic changes on lake development. His methods ;are to study plankton, fossils, pollen settling rate, and so on.

A theory on his history of the Pyramid Valley area in North Canterbury, based on these calculations, has already been published by Dr. Deevey. He has had extensive field experience outside the United States—ir Mexico in 1940, Guatemala in 1950 and 1961, Spain in 1951, Western Europe in 1954, and Poland in 1961. After gaining his Ph.D. at Yale in 1938, Dr. Deevey taught at several institutions until appointed associate professor at Yale in 1942. He has been professor of biology there since 1957.

Scientists and engineers engaged in . the more .general studies of water resources, and patterns hope to gain benefit from Dr. Deevey’s knowledge, as it can be related to the 10-year hydrological programme starting next January under UNESCO auspices. As a participant in UNESCO programmes, New Zealand has undertaken to make a full-scale survey of water resources, history, and behaviour patterns during the International Hydrological Decade.