by Riley Steinbrenner Week Eleven After spending the first part of their summer working with the Citizen Lake Monitoring program—which recruits lakeside-dwelling citizens to monitor water clarity using a Secchi disk—the Aquatic Invasive Species crew have spent their last few weeks recording plant populations on surrounding lakes by taking point-intercept surveys, or sampling at predetermined …
by Riley Steinbrenner It was 7:50 when I woke up one Friday morning to my phone’s alarm blaring the most obnoxious tone available via iOS. EEE-EEE-EEE. After realizing I indeed wasn’t on a submarine at war in the middle of the Pacific, I clamored out of bed and into the kitchen where I poured myself …
MADISON – Human beings are familiar with the idea of extreme events. Meteorologists keep us up to date on hurricanes, floods and high temperatures. Economists watch the stock market for signs of crashes or rallies. We spend a lot of time trying to better predict these events, yet are often surprised when they occur. But, …
by Andy Stevens If you’ve taken an evening stroll anywhere along the shore of Lake Mendota over the last week or so, you will likely have noticed large schools of translucent, pencil-like minnows darting about and jumping at the surface. These fish are a species called the brook silverside – Wisconsin’s only member of the …
On a hot, windy morning in late June, Ankur Desai and other members of his lab took their first steps to bridging a big gap in data between the aquatic and atmospheric sciences, as they set out in a cherry picker for a leisurely ride down the Lakeshore Path. Jonathan Thom and David Reed, two …
Happy Fish Fry Day! Enjoy this post from the Long Term Ecological Research Network. by Terra Alpaugh Between 2013 and 2015, Andrew Rypel traveled the state of Wisconsin attending public meetings led by state and local fisheries staff— always with a set of graphs in hand. These graphs showed the steady decline in the size …
by AnnaKay Kruger Michaela Kromrey clips herself into her bulky waders, fitting the straps over her shoulders and sealing herself into their protective rubber lining. We’ve dropped anchor near the shore of Jute Lake, and waves whip the side of the boat vigorously in the high wind. It’s a beautiful day, utterly devoid of cloud …
by AnnaKay Kruger “Well, that was an adventure!” says Aaron O’Connell, a UW-Plateville undergraduate, looking down at his bare feet as he steps gingerly across the gravel driveway. In one hand he carries his sodden shoes, and like me, he is covered from head-to-toe in lake grime. We have just spent the last two hours …
Last Wednesday, a couple of researchers ventured out onto frozen Lake Mendota to drill through the ice and take their yearly winter samples for the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project. A surprise awaited them as they broke through the ice. Instead of the usual cold-weather conditions of clear water with not much growing in it, …
Field Samples is a weekly Q&A asking researchers what they’ve been up to and what they’ve learned. Today, information manager/data scientist extraordinaire, Corinna Gries, talks the brave new world of “big data.” Who are you, where are you from, and how did you get here? I am Corinna Gries, Information Manager for the North Temperate Lakes Long-Term Ecological …