‘Biocomplexity’ project focuses on northern lakes

A team of a dozen university scientists will conduct a five-year, $3 million federal study of how human use of northern Wisconsin lakes affects sensitive shoreline ecosystems.

The grant is part of the National Science Foundation‘s new program on biocomplexity, which will help foster greater understanding of how living things at all levels interact with their environment. The UW–Madison study will focus on 50 lakes in Vilas and Oneida counties in northern Wisconsin, and include scientists from zoology, economics and agronomy.

“Lake-edge environments are ideal for this program, because so many things are happening in the near-shoreline area,” says Stephen Carpenter, principal investigator and professor of limnology. “It’s the nursery for most life in a lake and the area where most human impacts occur.”

The study will analyze human land use issues such as forestry and recreational development, fish production, near-shore vegetation and habitat, and exotic species problems in the lakes. The goal will be to measure how human use of the lakes affects the overall health of the ecosystem.

Included in the study will be a suite of lakes associated with UW–Madison’s Trout Lake Station, a research outpost north of Woodruff that has conducted basic research on lake for nearly a century.