From an early age, rivers, lakes, and streams have played an important role in my life. They are places of great beauty that seem to have a power to bring quiet and calm in an often chaotic world. To me, they have inherent worth that is independent of any practical use or economic value associated with them. Yet, they have immense practical and economic importance. Inland waters support a large proportion of the planet's biodiversity relative to their surface area, people rely on the fishes they support for a healthy source of protein, they provide drinking water and play an important role in the cycling of carbon, and they are important to people for recreation, as a result providing direct economic benefits to many. My work seeks to better understand how these systems function in order to better protect and steward these resources. Current large-scale environmental change, particularly warming, is already altering these systems in fundamental ways. My research is currently focused on understanding these changes and their consequences for lake ecosystems and the people who rely on them.