Highlights from the article: The Qu'Appelle Long-Term Ecological Research Program (QU-LTER) was established in 1994 as part of Dr. Peter Leavitt's research program at the University of Regina. Inspired by ecosystem research at University of Notre Dame's Environmental Research Center (UNDERC) and Canada's Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), the QU-LTER program has become a comprehensive environmental research initiative centered at the Institute of Environmental Change and Society (IECS, www.iecs-uregina.ca) in Regina and with linkages to dozens of international aquatic research groups. IECS Director, Dr. Peter Leavitt, has developed the Energy- I mass i flux framework to quantify the pathways by which climate and humans impact aquatic ecosystems (Leavitt et al. [14]). As director of the regional lake surveys, Dr. Bjoern Wissel uses stable isotopes to track food-web dynamics in lakes over a wide range in salinity.