Year: 2016

Art Hasler, Bluntnose Minnows and How Salmon Get Back Home

Happy Fish Fry Day! It’s the day that, like restaurants across Wisconsin, we put fish on our menu. Today’s main course – bluntnose minnows. As we tackle the “Fishes of Wisconsin” challenge, striving to write a post for each of the 183 species of fish found in Wisconsin, one might expect to stumble across a …

Celebrating World Wetlands Day 3 Ways

Tomorrow is World Wetlands Day, a celebration of the importance (and warning of the fragility) of some of Earth’s most beautiful ecosystems. Wetlands, the transitional ecosystem from an aquatic environment to terra firma, provide an incredible array of services to their surrounding landscapes – they filter sediment and pollutants out of the water, they absorb overflow and …

Fishes of Wisconsin: Louis Agassiz & the Mississippi Silvery Minnow

Last year we launched an overly ambitious project here on the blog – post each week about one of the 183 species on the epic “FIshes of Wisconsin” poster. That proved easier said than done, but we’re back and ready to tackle more of the 13-foot-long behemoth. This week, a few interesting tidbits about the …

Video: Limnology 101 – Lake Stratification

CFL graduate student, Colin Smith, produced and narrated this first video in our new “Limnology 101” series. Here he explains why lakes separate into warm, upper layers and cold, bottom layers.  Check it out! Stay tuned for more “Limnology 101,” as we explain some of the basic physical and biological principles of the study of our inland …

The Bold Prediction on Lake Michigan’s Sport Fishery That, Unfortunately, Was Proven Right

by Steve Carpenter Every moment, our brains make predictions of what we will next encounter in our lives based on our lifetime of experiences. As our experiences are updated, our brain adjusts and accounts for the new information in its next predictions. The discovery that brains engage in co-evolving cycles of predictions and actions is …

Science on Tap Adds New Short-Format Series to Its Video Archives

On the first frigid Wednesday night of February, 2013, Science on Tap-Minocqua held  its first event at the Minocqua Brewing Company in northern Wisconsin. On February 3rd, we’ll mark the 3-year anniversary with a talk by Trina McMahon on the “Microbes All Around Us.” We’re celebrating the anniversary with a new series of short-format “highlight” …

Awards, Judges Set for “Our Waters, Our Future” Writing Contest

MADISON — Two of Wisconsin’s literary leaders will help decide the winner of the Our Waters, Our Future writing contest. Peter Annin, journalist and author of Great Lakes Water Wars, and Fabu, as Madison’s third poet laureate is professionally known, have agreed to help select the top stories that imagine a positive future for water …

Fish species, rural livelihoods threatened by new dams on world’s largest rivers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Advocates of huge hydroelectric dam projects on the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong rivers often overestimate economic benefits and underestimate far-reaching effects on biodiversity, according to an article in the Jan. 8 issue of Science by a cadre of scientists representing 30 academic, government, and conservation organizations in eight countries. “These three river …