Tag archives for lakes
Posted by 
At a fish-rearing facility near Michigan‘s Kalamazoo River, I’m peering inside a big, water-filled tub at lake sturgeon eggs no bigger than BB pellets. Someday these will grow into the biggest fish in North America, but for now, they’re the precious cargo of a state program to bring these freshwater giants back to their native…
Posted by 
Tropical lakes in East Africa don’t grab headlines the way polar bears do, but climate change is having an effect on them, too. Although the changes are not as visible as melting polar ice caps, they are no less real. As in many lakes around the world, water temperature is on the rise in Lake…
Posted by 
On Saturday, Paul Rose put on a dry diving suit and walked to the end of a pier on scenic Lake Windermere, the largest natural lake in England. He plunged into the cold water. “I had been underwater for 30 seconds when I bumped straight into a complete toilet,” Rose told Water Currents. Rose, a…
The Treasures of Tursujuq: one of North America’s largest national parks
Posted by Jeff Wells on February 22, 2013 With little fanfare, the Inuit people of Nunavik in northern Quebec, the Grand Council of the Cree, and the Government of Quebec announced the creation of Tursujuq National Park—a 6.5 million acre protected area along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. Not only is this remarkable for its size—it’s the largest protected area in eastern North America and one of the top 10 largest parks on the continent—but perhaps even more incredible is that the park is several million acres larger than it had been expected to be a few years ago.
I’m posting Freshwater Species of the Week a day early because I just caught wind that biologists have discovered “monster” goldfish breeding in Lake Tahoe. I visited Lake Tahoe a few winters ago, and can say with experience that it’s a stunning natural gem. Snow-capped peaks ring the crystal-clear blue water, which supports a diverse…
It looks like low water levels on the Great Lakes will be added to the record-breaking climate-related events of 2012. The water level on Lakes Michigan and Huron dropped another 2.5 inches (6 cm) in December, unofficially breaking a nearly 50-year-old record for the month. Last month’s average for both lakes – considered one lake…
A named tropical storm had dramatic effects on a group of aquatic ecosystems last year, but the affected waters were not what you might expect. They were freshwater lakes and reservoirs spread across the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, some located far inland from the coast. A new study sheds light on the consequences of…
For people living around the Great Lakes, water levels this past month have appeared much lower than many will remember. The upper Great Lakes reached near-record low water levels in October. This was most evident on Lakes Michigan and Huron, where lake levels dropped to less than two inches (4 cm) above record lows…
Lake Tahoe is one of hundreds of lakes around the world in the midst of a warming trend. The effects of climate change are starting to complicate efforts to maintain the lake’s relatively pristine state, putting Tahoe’s sapphire blue water and its overall ecological health at risk. Surrounded by the Sierra Nevada Mountains and…
News reports about warming lake temperatures began to trickle into my world lakes news feed as the summer heated up this year. I read stories about warmer than normal lakes in North America and Europe, including lakes in Kansas, California, and Washington. By the end of July, the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of…
An Aquatic Surprise at BioBlitz 2012
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 26, 2012 Ecologist Evan Thomas of the University of Colorado looked for a decade for a green algae called Volvox. At this year’s BioBlitz, surrounded by volunteers eager to catalog the water bugs of Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, he found it! I asked Evan to explain his find. Sandra Postel is director of the…
Counting Water Bugs for Rocky Mountain BioBlitz
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 25, 2012 Tiny bugs called macro-invertebrates help make freshwater ecosystems tick, and as a team of volunteers found out at Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, they’re diverse, abundant and just plain cool little creatures. Rachel Harrington, a freshwater ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, led the BioBlitz volunteers in identifying the water…
Posted by Bob McMinn, a former Mayor of the District of Highlands on Vancouver Island, Canada, writes how at age 86 he has learned that Twitter can help his life-long campaign to create a 107-acre conservancy, linking some of the island’s fragmented parkland and helping save numerous species living in threatened dry coastal Douglas fir habitat. By…
The summer of 2010 is shaping up as one with some of the warmest water temperatures ever for the world’s largest lake, according to researchers at the Large Lakes Observatory (LLO) of the University of Minnesota Duluth. “As always, changing water temperatures in Lake Superior have a wide range of implications, from the productivity of…
Posted by There’s so many reasons Titan is just darn cool. Discovered in 1655, the Saturn moon is the second biggest moon in our solar system (beat out only by Jupiter‘s Ganymede). It’s also the only moon known to have a planet-like atmosphere, complete with clouds, a cool fact that unfortunately meant its surface long remained a…
