Maintaining healthy ecosystems is essential to human wellbeing. We need to understand and mitigate our impacts on the balance of plants, animals and microbes around us. Andrew Gonzalez, Biology Professor at the McGill School of Environment and Director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, is using an innovative approach to help do just that. In his largest project, LEAP (Large Experimental Array of Ponds), he is creating ecosystems analogous to Canada’s freshwater lakes in a controlled environment, and running experiments where he introduces common contaminants like pesticides and insecticides to observe the impact.