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<div>Yale 360:<font face="Verdana" size="-3"> 19 NOV
2015:</font><font face="Verdana Bold" size="-3"> REPORT</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" size="+1">On Thin Ice: Big Northern Lakes
Are Being Rapidly Transformed</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1">As temperatures rise, the world's
iconic northern lakes are undergoing major changes that include
swiftly warming waters, diminished ice cover, and outbreaks of harmful
algae. Now, a global consortium of scientists is trying to assess the
toll.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" size="-1"
color="#000000"
>http://e360.yale.edu/feature/on_thin_ice_big_northern_lakes_are_bein<span
></span>g_rapidly_transformed/2933/</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Excerpt:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">More than three in four large lakes
above the 40th parallel north, roughly the latitude of New York City
and Madrid, have undergone summer surface temperature increases of 2.7
F or higher from 1985 to 2009, a new international research
collaboration finds. Some lake temperatures rose more than twice that
amount. Nearly all have experienced retreating winter ice, a loss that
can interfere with internal circulation, reduce oxygen, and help
create fertile breeding grounds for harmful algae. These changes,
which appear to be accelerating, have potentially profound
consequences for water supply, food, and aquatic life.<br>
<br>
"Lakes are very clearly telling us that there's rapid warming
worldwide," said Stephanie Hampton, an aquatic ecologist at
Washington State University in Pullman and a member of the Global Lake
Temperature Collaboration, a grassroots scientific effort that's
compiling an international database of lake observations. "Whatever
is happening to them is not only a sentinel for larger environmental
change," said Hampton, "but it also directly makes a difference to
us."</font><br>
<font face="Lucida Grande"></font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">Until recently, scientists had scant
knowledge of how atmospheric heating and increasing weather extremes
were affecting lakes throughout the world. Limnology - the study of
inland bodies of water - typically centered on a specific lake, with
little information exchange across regions. But the far-flung global
lake collaboration - which is compiling data ranging from Alpine
lake temperature observations by an Austrian naturalist in the
mid-1800s, to century-old Baikal ice measurements that survived wars
and revolutions, to the latest satellite imaging and probes - is
beginning to reveal the planetary toll.</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>End excerpt:</div>
<div><font face="Georgia" size="-1"
color="#000000"
>http://e360.yale.edu/feature/on_thin_ice_big_northern_lakes_are_bein<span
></span>g_rapidly_transformed/2933/</font></div>
<div><br></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-1" color="#141413">"Climate
change will alter ecosystem services, perceptions of value, and
decisions regarding land uses. Outcomes for people will be determined
by the interaction between changes in biophysical environments (e.g.,
climate, disturbance, and invasive species) and human responses to
those changes (management and policy)."<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#141413">United States
Department of Agriculture<br>
Forest Service<br>
Pacific Northwest Research Station<br>
General Technical Report PNW-GTR-870<br>
December 2012</font></div>
<div><font face="Cambria" size="-2"
color="#FFFF00"><u
>http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr870/pnw_gtr870.pdf</u></font></div
>
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