UW undergrad, Emily Hilts, spent her summer getting to know Lake Mendota. While she didn’t fall head over heels for Madison’s lakes, she’s leaving on good terms. by Emily Hilts This morning, I moved my books and papers out of the desk I used at the Center for Limnology all summer, and took some time …
The CFL’s Ellen Hamann, lab manager for Pete McIntyre’s lab, has been back in Africa this summer, helping continue research on Lake Tanganyika. She sent in this note from the field before returning to Madison for fall semester. By Ellen Hamann For the past 48 hours, Benja (Ben Kraemer from Pete McIntyre’s lab) and I …
by Aisha Liebenow Once I heard that I was going to be working for the CFL up north this summer, all I kept hearing about Trout Lake Station was what a great place it is to live and work. Now I can offer the same assessment – it has not only met, but far exceeded …
by Aisha Liebenow This last week was one heck of a week for Trout Lake Station. On Monday, we had our curtain removal at Little Rock Lake, reuniting the two halves of the lake and ending thirty-years’ worth of ground-breaking research. It was a huge undertaking, one that couldn’t have been done without all of …
By Emily Hilts Lakes transform when the sun goes down. The once-familiar shoreline becomes unrecognizable and water takes on an inhospitable chill, making an after-hours trip a notch more exciting. So, when graduate student Jake Walsh (who studies zooplankton in the Vander Zanden lab) invited me to come along for a night of sampling, I …
Last week I took advantage of the clear water conditions to observe fish in their natural habitat. While it was an awesome experience, I was left wondering: “Why does the water start off clear and get exponentially scummier over the summer?” At first glance, the question doesn’t seem complicated. Algae don’t thrive in cold conditions, …
by Aisha Liebenow “You love what you know.” This is how Susie Hoffman, Director of the Center for Conservation Leadership (CCL), described the interest that the Lake County high school students showed during Trout Lake Station director, Tim Kratz’, presentation at the North Lakeland Discovery Center. She continued, “You know how when we first came …
As spring moves to summer, an unprecedented scientific collaboration is sending researchers around the globe scrambling into their boats and simultaneously heading out onto the world’s lakes. It’s called “Spring Blitz,” and, from Wisconsin to Florida to Switzerland, scientists are out monitoring everything from water temperature to dissolved oxygen to plankton communities as lakes in …
Over the last several years, state agencies and environmental non-profit organizations have targeted dam removal as a way to quickly improve the health of aquatic ecosystems. Dams keep migratory fish from swimming upriver to spawn, block nutrients from flowing downstream, and change the entire hydrology of a watershed. From an ecosystem perspective, taking down a …
Earlier this month, CFL graduate student and Wisconsin DNR research scientist, Alison (Ali) Mikulyuk received the 2013 Wisconsin Lake Stewardship Award along with her colleagues Martha Barton, Michelle Nault, & Kelly Wagner for their work with the WDNR‘s Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Research department. (In Wisconsin Lake circles, they’re affectionately known as the “Plant Divas.”) …