Folks over at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources have an excellent blog called “Live from the Lakes” featuring a series called “Lake of the Month” and, this month, that lake will be no stranger to anyone who follows our work. Sparkling Lake, up in Vilas County, received a nice write-up, featuring research spearheaded by the North Temperate Lakes Long-Term Ecological Research project, which is managed here at the Center for Limnology. LTER scientists have battled the invasive rusty crayfish in Sparkling Lake and, as the WDNR blog shows, have managed to gain the upper hand. Keep reading for the first part of the story…

Lake of the Month: Sparkling Lake in Vilas County

by Heather Smith
November’s Lake of the Month, Sparkling Lake, is a 157-acre lake with clear waters and natural shorelines in the middle of the Northern Highland State Forest in Vilas County. Sparkling Lake is part of a large cluster of lakes in Vilas, Iron, Oneida, Forest and Price counties called the Northern Highland Lake District. This area has one of the densest concentrations of lakes in the world and it’s a hotspot for limnology research.  Sparkling is one of 11 Wisconsin lakes that scientists have been monitoring since 1981 as part of the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research Program, funded by the National Science Foundation and administered by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Limnology.

Bluegills on the rebound in Sparkling Lake (Photo courtesy of Gretchen Hansen)
Continued over at the WDNR blog.