Earlier this month, Richard “Dick” Lathrop, a long-time limnologist and honorary fellow at the Center for Limnology headed out to Devil’s Lake in Devil’s Lake State Park to take a sample of an algae bloom. We asked him to send a report of what he found. By Richard Lathrop – While many people think of …
This weekend, my family and I went on a drive. These days, any chance to leave the house while still practicing safe social distancing feels like a blessing and this drive felt especially so. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and hints of the lush, green landscape Wisconsin will soon become were everywhere – …
by Adam Rexroade For Madison residents, the summer of 2018 was a summer of heavy rain, ongoing flooding and inaccessible lakes. Pictures of kayakers floating down flooded streets and sandbags holding back floodwaters littered newspapers all summer long. These dramatic photos earned those front cover pages—Madison received almost 20 inches of rain from June through August. Much …
While we were knee-deep in stories about algae problems in Wisconsin’s lakes this summer, a serious outbreak of blooms has been unfolding in Florida where a massive “red tide” is swirling in the waters off both its Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Here in Wisconsin, our potentially toxic bluegreen blooms are caused by cyanobacteria like Microcystis aeruginosa, anabeana and …
After last week’s massive cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) bloom in Lake Mendota and smaller (but no less unpleasant) blooms reported in Lake Monona and Waubesa, we received all sorts of questions on what causes these blooms, if they are dangerous and how to stop them. Here are some answers to a few of the frequently asked …
It’s beginning to look a lot like the end of the year, and that means we’re looking back at some of the stories that shaped the Center for Limnology in 2017. It was a year of many changes, retirements, exciting research and well-deserved awards. You can read (and download) the entire newsletter in a PDF …
Over the last few decades, change has defined our environment in the United States. Agriculture intensified. Urban areas sprawled. The climate warmed. Intense rainstorms became more common. But, says a new study, while those kinds of changes usually result in poor water quality, lakes have mostly stayed the same. The authors of the article, published …
Originally Published October, 2014 – Earlier this month, anyone down on the shores of Madison’s lakes may have noticed the water tinged the green hue of an algae bloom, something we normally associate with the warmer summer months. But a final fall bloom isn’t all that unusual – It just means that the lakes are, literally, …
The latest issue of Madison’s Capital Times has an excellent cover story exploring a new effort to reduce the amount of phosphorus that ends up in Madison lakes. As the article points out – each pound of phosphorus that enters our waterways can fertilize the growth of up to 500 pounds of blue-green algae. Yahara …
If you head down to the shore of Lake Mendota today, you’ll notice you can see right down to the bottom. In fact, the current Secchi reading is seven meters, meaning you can get a clear view of Lake Mendota’s depths more than 20 feet down. At first glance, it might seem that there’s just …