At a recent open house for UW Trout Lake Station near Boulder Junction, visitors got to experience research projects "hands on". The annual event featured interesting displays telling stories of our lakes and what is within them.
Vince Butitta, an undergraduate student of Lawrence University and a graduate student of UW Madison’s Center of Limnology, spoke of his research at the center....
“I’m in my first year. I’m working in Emily Stanley’s lab. She does a lot with biogeochemistry, so really how the water and the landscape and the nutrients are all interacting, instead of just looking at one level of our ecosystems, kind of looking across all levels at the same time.”
Butitta says the purpose of the U. W. Trout Lake Station, is a part of the longterm ecological research network, involving 25 sites in North America. Buttitta says Trout Lake is known as a North Temperate Lake Site. He says they have a large number of researchers and a large amount of collaboration between projects.
Dr. Jessica Corman, a post doctoral researcher at the Center of Limnology at UW-Madison, says the Trout Lake experience is unique...
“So I’m up here at Trout Lake Station and it’s just a fantastic place to work because there are so many different lakes, there’s so much variation between them. You can get a really comprehensive picture of what are the important processes that influence water quality and health of the ecosystem for the region.”
Corman says she does research work at Trout Lake in the summer then the rest of the year she's doing chemical analysis and writing papers.
Information on invasive species were a highlight of the day's presentations along with ice cream and pontoon rides on the well-known Vilas county lake.
