Seen from shore, it doesn’t look like a lot is going on in Trout Lake in northern Wisconsin. Aside from windy days that shove waves against its mostly wooded shoreline, the lake presents, more often …
Learn Your Lakes
Help Keep Our Freshwater Fresh! Salt Smarter, Not Harder.
Yesterday, I rounded the corner of the block in my neighborhood and immediately pulled my dog off the sidewalk. Spread out before us was a carpet of chalky white salt crystals stretching across nearly a …
January Freeze Dates Becoming the Norm for Madison Lakes
When Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin froze over a few days after New Year’s Eve, it marked the beginning of “ice season,” a time of year when (once the ice gets thick enough, of course) …
Our Top 5 Posts of 2021: Dead Zones, Sleeper Populations & Good News on Algae Blooms
Happy New Year! Here’s hoping 2022 trends upward a little more steeply than the past couple of years. We here at the Center for Limnology are excited to share even more freshwater news, research and …
Study: Not Even the Largest Lakes in the World Are Immune to Salt
Tourist towns along the Lake Michigan shoreline love to proclaim the giant body of water “Unsalted and Shark-Free.” The slogan is plastered on t-shirts, magnets and bumper stickers but, according to a study published December …
Langmuir Circulation: Explaining Lines of Bubbles on the Surface of A Lake
When you live in a state defined by lakes like we do here in Wisconsin, you often get a front-row view of just how dynamic and changing those bodies of water can be. Each day …
In Rare Dose of Good Climate News Study Finds That, No, Algae Blooms Aren’t Getting Worse Everywhere
As Earth’s average temperature rises, climate change impacts are being felt across the globe. Hurricanes and wildfires are bigger and more destructive. Extreme rain events are more common. Droughts last longer. But, surprisingly, one big …
Is Bigger Better? Study Confirms Larger Fish Are Tops in Estuary Food Webs
In the ecological sciences it is generally accepted that, the bigger an organism, the higher its position or “trophic level” in the food web. There are, of course, obvious exceptions – wolves and lions are …
Is Tiny Find in Lake Mendota a Silver Lining for a Declining Species?
Earlier this summer, Alice Ogden-Nussbaum was checking on a gill net she had set a day earlier in Lake Mendota’s deepest waters. As she rolled the curtain of net up out of the lake, a …
Blue waters – green beaches: benthic filamentous algae are an emerging threat to clear lakes worldwide
by Nadja Neumann, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries Many of the world’s well-known clear lakes are deteriorating at an alarming rate: at the shore, where people want to play and swim, the …