A damehood is recognition of the importance New Zealanders place on the country's lakes, an international authority on ecology says.
Visiting the world's most ancient lake in Siberia is among the highlights of Dame Carolyn Burns's career. Photo: Carl Anderson
Professor Carolyn Burns has been made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to ecological research.
She was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal, and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1984.
Dame Carolyn is a leading international authority on the ecology of lakes, and is renowned for her pioneering research on the ecology of zooplankton.
She said she felt humbled and deeply honoured to be made a Dame.
"I'm very grateful to those individuals and organisations who have helped me along the way to get where I am now," Dame Carolyn said.
"I am immensely pleased and encouraged by this award because I see it as a recognition by New Zealand and by New Zealanders of the value and importance of our fresh waters, in particular our lakes.
"For too long they have been undervalued and I'm hoping this award will allow them the prominence and elevation to the status they deserve and with it the recognition of the needs in terms of other management in the future."
Among her most memorable moments was visiting the world's most ancient lake.
"It's the excitement of getting to see some of these lakes that I only know about from the literature, like getting to the deepest oldest lake in the world in Siberia, Lake Baikal, that was tremendously exciting."
Lake Baikal is an ancient lake in the mountainous Russian region of Siberia, north of the Mongolian border.
A winter view of Lake Baikal in Siberia. Photo: AFP
For her research, Dame Carolyn was awarded the International Limnological Society's Naumann-Thienemann Medal in 2007, and more recently, the Marsden Medal and the Thomson Medal from the New Zealand Association of Scientists and Royal Society of New Zealand respectively.
She was the first female president of the International Limnological Society from 1995 to 2001 and head of the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago from 1998 to 2005.
She was a member of the Marsden Fund Council and convened the Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour panel.
She has served as chair of the Nature Conservation Council and was a member of the National Parks and Reserves Authority until 1990.
She was a regional councillor of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) from 1984 to 1990 and chaired the New Zealand committee of IUCN members from 1986 to 1990. She was a member of the board of directors of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and the Board of Antarctica New Zealand.
Dame Carolyn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1993 and was subsequently the first woman to chair the society's Academy Council.