Project Grant 2224890

This five-year, $229,571 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund research examining the impact of climate change on functional biodiversity in Lake Tanganyika, Africa. Led by Brown University, the project will use sedimentary records to model historical community structures and functions under different climate change scenarios. Researchers will assess open water and benthic communities using geochemical, fossil, and genomic tools. The work will reveal how aquatic organisms, particularly economically important fish species, respond to temperature and precipitation changes in large tropical lakes. Results aim to help fisheries and ecosystem managers safeguard food resources and biodiversity. The grant also supports training workshops and public outreach materials developed in international partnership.