Dr. Martin T. Auer
Professor of Civil & Environmental
Engineering
Michigan Technological University
Abstract
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One of the largest lakes in the world, Lake Superior is known for its great depths, cold temperatures and ferocious storms. Its reputation as the least studied of the Laurentian Great Lakes is becoming less and less deserved as scientists and engineers from academia and government laboratories focus more resources on exploration of this valued ecosystem. The least productive of the Great Lakes, nutrient-poor Lake Superior is considered by some to be an ice bath of distilled water: home to a few beautiful islands and perhaps fewer lake trout. Yet, the ecosystem supports a complex and fascinating food web, one which has adapted to conditions of extreme cold and nutrient deficiency and a very short limnological summer. In our explorations of Lake Superior, Michigan Tech scientists and engineers have first sought out signals: clues to the life of the lake made manifest in the spatial and temporal structure of sediment and water chemistry, microbial activity, invertebrate organism abundance and distribution and the migratory patterns of fish. Here, I will briefly describe the work of several Michigan Tech explorers and then focus on two specific topics of interest to my research group: formation and dissipation of the deep chlorophyll maximum and patterns of distribution in the amphipod Diporeia (presently in severe decline in the other Great Lakes). My objective will be to describe some of the most dramatic signals emanating from the Lake Superior ecosystem and to discuss the transition from a description of those signals to a more fundamental understanding of the processes which drive them.
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