ABOUT
Henderson Ecology is an independent environmental consultancy specialising in freshwater ecology and palaeoecology. With specific expertise in freshwater diatom and phytoplankton monitoring we work with government agencies, universities and independent companies providing high quality data to ascertain the ecological status of a site and to aid the implementation of environmental protection plans.
Gina Henderson (née Clarke, B.Sc., M.Res., Ph.D) is a freshwater ecologist who specialises in phytoplankton monitoring and the biological analysis of lake sediments. She started her career in freshwater ecology 18 years ago completing a Masters and PhD at the Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London (UCL) investigating the relationship between diatoms and climate change in Northern Europe. After completing postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois, USA she worked as a Senior Research Scientist at ENSIS Ltd, UCL for the next 11 years before setting up Henderson Ecology in 2018.
Gina possesses significant experience and expertise in the identification of UK freshwater phytoplankton taxa and is competent in the required methods for enumeration and biovolume calculations. She has over 11 years experience providing annual and seasonal phytoplankton monitoring data to government agencies (EA, NIEA, SEPA & CEH) to support the Water Framework Directive.
Her expertise in palaeoecology is extensive and diverse, analysing diatom assemblages, chironomid head capsules, cladocera body parts and plant macrofossils within lake sediment cores. She is interested in how these proxies can be used to infer changes in lake conditions in the past over different time-scales. She has worked extensively on a wide range of UK lakes but has also worked on sites in Alaska, USA, Myanmar, Russia, Denmark and Norway. For more information on her work please see the publications section.