The pier is in. The ice is off. Fish migrations are already underway. And that means that the “open water” field season at the Center for Limnology is about to begin. Before I start filling this blog up with engaging posts about our exciting research, though, I thought I’d take a moment to look back …
Yesterday afternoon, eight brave souls decided to abandon their desks and help CFL facility manager, Dave Harring, put the Hasler Lab dock out into Lake Mendota. It was an unusual sight for March 20th to say the least – 80 degree weather, crew boats gliding past us on the water – but it appears field …
While it wasn’t a record-setting early date for Lake Mendota to return to its more, um, liquid state this year, the official March 10th “ice-off” date is right in line with the long term trend that’s moving Mendota’s typical melt date from early April (as was the norm 100 years ago) to early March over …
Last week, I ventured out on the ice of Lake Mendota as Ted Bier, senior research specialist for the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research study (LTER), drilled through the ice to take samples in the open water below. Bier mentioned that the ice, at 17 centimeters thick, was thinner than usual, but I …