by Kat Kerlin (UC Davis) Walleye, an iconic native fish species in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest and Canada, are in decline in northern Wisconsin lakes, according to a study in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Species The study does not pinpoint the exact causes for the decline, though it suggests it is likely a combination of …
(This article was originally published January 22, 2018 and has been updated with photos from January 2022) by Adam Hinterthuer – Two weeks ago, I walked down the hill from my house to do something I’d never done before. On the shoreline of Lake Monona, in the time it took my wife to get herself …
Welcome back to our blog! We’ve got big plans in store for 2018, but first wanted to touch base on something that happened way back in 2017 – December 27th, to be exact. If you were in the Madison area and ventured out along the shoreline of our beautiful lakes, you would’ve seen that Lake …
An important and informative news story just hit social media feeds this morning. In it, Steve Elbow, a journalist with The Capital Times, lays out all of the many ways that Wisconsin is experiencing climate change. And he details the state government’s effort to not only ignore the problem, but also scrub any previous climate …
by Luke Loken Autumn is typically associated with fall colors, pumpkin spice lattes, and cool temperatures. However this year, much of the Midwest has been stuck in summer-like conditions. And these record temperatures come with unexpected consequences. Usually, as the air cools in autumn so do the surfaces of our lakes. When a lake’s surface …
by Cheryl Reitan & Adam Hinterthuer Duluth, MN – In September of 2014, fifty-eight scientists gathered to discuss the most pressing research needs in the Great Lakes region. Even though the five lakes contain nearly one-fifth of all the world’s available fresh water and supply that water to more than 35 million people across two …
A cool, wet Spring and booming populations of algae-munching daphnia couldn’t hold-off the inevitable – Madison’s lakes have been beset by cyanobacteria blooms the last few day. We dusted off this older post to explain what’s going on and precautions you should take during blooms: The Bloom Begins (Originally published June 21, 2017) — It …
Yesterday morning I brought breakfast to my daughters at our dining room table, glanced out the window and did a double take. The waters of Lake Monona were a churning mass of brownish bluish green. What had only the night before been a flat sheet of late-winter ice had disappeared, broken up by the unusually …
NOTE: This post originally ran on January 17, 2012. In the four of the five years since this post, Lake Mendota has frozen over well after its “median” freeze date, and in three of the five years it has thawed much earlier. A few days before Christmas, I was headed down John Nolen Drive on …
by Samantha Oliver Today, I woke up at my favorite place on earth – Ten Mile Lake, in Hackensack, Minnesota. On the coldest day of the winter thus far, the frozen lake is so bright, so sparkly, it is almost hard to look at. And when you are from a place where 30 below is …