Latest Lake Stories

Veterans of the Great Lakes shipping industry predict 2009 will be a slow season once the ice melts and the big barges get under way. "It's probably going to be kind of rough, said Ned Swartzinski, a wheelsman and maintenance worker at Interlake Steamship Co., The Detroit News reported Monday. Some of our vessels won't be coming out as early as they normally do, said Interlake President Mark Barker. He predicted one of his ships might not sail this year, if demand doesn't increase. Great...

Researchers are exploring extreme conditions for life in a place not known for extremes.As little as 20 meters (66 feet) below the surface of Lake Huron, the third largest of North America's Great Lakes, peculiar geological formations"”sinkholes made by water dissolving parts of an ancient underlying seabed"”harbor bizarre ecosystems where the fish typical of the huge freshwater lake are rarely to be seen. Instead, brilliant purple mats of cyanobacteria"”cousins of microbes found at the...

Canada's inland waters, the countless lakes and reservoirs across the country, are important "sentinels" for climate change and Ottawa and the provinces are ignoring the warnings.That's the message from University of Alberta biologist David Schindler and colleagues in a paper to be released Feb. 12, 2009, in the prestigious publication, Science.Schindler is a co-author of Sentinels of Change, which reviewed papers addressing the effects of climate change revealed in numerous...

New research helps us understand the incredible forces and oil and gas reserves that lie hidden beneath the Earth's surfaceIt was the geological collision between India and Asia millions of years ago that created one of the world's most distinctive places: The area around Lake Baikal in Siberia, which contains 20 percent of the world's fresh water reserves and a unique display of plant- and wildlife.That is the conclusion reached by two Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen,...

- high-grade intercepts include 5.07 oz/ton over 8.2 feet (173.7 g/t gold over 2.5 metres)- TSX:RMX / NYSE Alternext US:RBY TORONTO, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Rubicon Minerals Corporation (RMX.TSX: RBY.NYSE Alternext US) is pleased to announce new results from ongoing drilling at its 100%-controlled Phoenix Gold Project, located in the heart of the prolific Red Lake gold district of Ontario. The Company is conducting drilling around the F2 Gold Zone from which...

Early Holocene dry climate caused lakes to become disconnectedThe water level in the Great Lakes has varied by only about two meters during the last century, helping them to play a vital role in the region's shipping, fishing, recreation and power generation industries.But new evidence by scientists from the University of Rhode Island and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, published last month in the journal Eos, indicates that the water level in the lake system is highly sensitive to climate...

Unparalleled warming over the last few decades has triggered widespread ecosystem changes in many temperate North American and Western European lakes, say researchers at Queen's University and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.The team reports that striking changes are now occurring in many temperate lakes similar to those previously observed in the rapidly warming Arctic, although typically many decades later. The Arctic has long been considered a "bellwether" of what will...

Scientists have long known that life can exist in some very extreme environments. But Earth continues to surprise us.At a European Science Foundation and COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) 'Frontiers of Science' meeting in Sicily in October, scientists described apparently productive ecosystems in two places where life was not known before, under the Antarctic ice sheet, and above concentrated salt lakes beneath the Mediterranean. In both cases,...

A study led by Japanese and German researchers suggests climate change will have different effects on lakes in warmer and colder regions of the Earth. Scientists from Hokkaido University, the Hokkaido Institute of Environmental Sciences, Kagoshima University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research compared current measurements in Japan's very deep caldera lakes with measurements taken 70 years ago. The findings, said the researchers, confirm a rise in temperatures in the deep...

By KEN MIDKIFF Nyah, nyah, nyah. Told you so, told you so. OK, that's somewhat childish. But that was my first reaction when I learned that Philips Lake (or Bristol Lake, or whatever it is called these days) was recommended for placement on the state's "impaired waterbody" - or 303(d) - list. This documents that Philips Lake is officially "waters of the state" and "waters of the United States." It is not a farm pond, where all of the waters are contained within one property. Rather the...