by Hilary Dugan – Why are lakes blue? Or green? Or brown? The color of a lake reflects what’s in the water. Pure water appears blue, lakes with a lot of algae appear green, and …
Learn Your Lakes
Clear Water? Yes. Green Scum? Also yes. What’s Going on Out There?
by Jake Vander Zanden — You may have noticed that, In the last week or so, the Madison lakes have been crystal clear, with visibility of up to 30 feet recorded in Lake Mendota by …
Seeping Salt: Study Finds “Slow and Steady” Salinization of North American Lakes
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Many North American lakes are getting saltier, thanks primarily to the road salt used to keep winter roads free of ice and snow. While this salt can keep precipitation from freezing …
Study Finds Link Between Climate Change and Longer “Dead Zones” in Lakes
A new study in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences is linking climate change to yet another environmental impact – longer lasting “dead zones” In lakes. According to the study, warm summer weather is …
Study: Stories of Invasive Species Often Begin with Undetected “Sleeper Populations”
When an invasive species overruns an ecosystem, it is often assumed that the organism recently arrived at its new home and rapidly took over. But a report published in the journal, BioScience, says that many …
Video: Why We’re Spending Another Winter Snowplowing a Bog
This year marks the second season for our ambitious winter limnology experiment up in Vilas County. In case you missed our initial post about why in the world someone would spend all winter plowing a …
Annual PSA: To Keep Our Freshwater Fresh, We Must Be Smart About Winter Salt
Winter in the colder climes of North America means a lot of things – frozen lakes, white blankets of snow and, far too often, the crunch of salt crystals underfoot. While we use salt to …
Winter in Wisconsin: Life on Ice
For those of us lucky enough to live where our lakes freeze in the winter, one of the true joys of the season is getting out on the ice. Suddenly, a space that was only …
Why Do We Say Lake Mendota is Frozen Before it’s Fully Frozen?
This weekend, the Center for Limnology Twitter account was tagged in a post from the UW Department of Emergency Medicine’s chief flight physician and pilot, Mike Abernethy, who had been flying a helicopter over Lake …
Where Does Lake Mendota’s Freeze Date Fall in Historic Average?
In case you missed the news, Lake Mendota was officially deemed “frozen” by the Wisconsin State Climatology Office on Sunday. That January 3rd “ice on” date is about two weeks later than the median freeze …