The second installment of the “Wordless” Wednesday Photo Caption Contest generated a lot of good submissions, but we’re giving the (imaginary) award this week to clever captioner, Denise Karns, whose title “center assistant” doesn’t begin to describe everything she does here at Hasler Lab. Denise wrote in with this gem: “It would have been easier …
The October 2012 issue of Scientific American is out and it features a nice article on ecosystem regime shifts, CFL experimental workhorses Peter and Paul Lakes, and our director, Steve Carpenter. Ecosystems on the Brink by Carl Zimmer Peter lake lies deep in a maple forest near the Wisconsin-Michigan border. One day in July 2008 …
A few weeks ago, a team of students and staff headed out on Lake Mendota well after sundown. The group was taking a yearly census of fish populations in Lake Mendota, one of several Wisconsin lakes that make up a study area of the National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research program, or LTER. There are …
Hello There Loyal Blog Reader (and/or Brand-New Visitor!) We here at the Center for Limnology are committed to bringing you all the best we have to offer, from just-published research, to an inside look at our labs, to virtual “ride-alongs” with teams out doing field work. But we acknowledge the regularity of such content has been …
Back in 2009, a team of engineers and scientists affiliated with the Center for Limnology had a crazy idea – they wanted to see if they could manipulate an entire lake to kill off an invasive fish without harming the lake’s native fish. (The usual method for eradicating an invasive species is poisoning the entire …
School is back in session, and Ellen is safely back on the shores of Lake Mendota, but before we wrap up our summer series on her adventures researching Lake Tanganyika for Pete McIntyre’s lab, here’s a final dispatch from Africa… The Final Push It’s my last week on Lake Tanganyika for the year, and Ben …
This summer, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Limnology and Wright State University in Ohio, are on the shores of Africa’s Lake Tanganyika, the oldest and deepest of the African rift lakes. Understanding how “Lake T” works is imperative in order to protect its remarkable biodiversity ( there are more …
In the summer of 2012, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Limnology and Wright State University in Ohio, will call the shores of Africa’s Lake Tanganyika home. The oldest and deepest of the African rift lakes, Tanganyika is a natural wonder under severe threat. What’s more, it’s near-shore ecosystem contains …
Besides the rowboat being pulled across a grid of buoys, the surface of Peter Lake is calm. But, just 5 meters below the surface, a full experiment is under way. “Annndddd…. There is C-13 spilling out down there!” shouts Grace Wilkinson. Looking into the water doesn’t do any good, the carbon-isotope tracer that Wilkinson and …
Ryan Batt dips a bucket into the lake, and pulls up a quarter-gallon of… Gatorade? At the surface, Ward Lake is like any small bog: tall trees and sedges are reflected on the dark surface and beaver-gnawed branches stick out at odd angles. Looking down into the water, the lake doesn’t seem that remarkable. But …