The Big Blue-Green Algae Monster from Lake Mendota:Will It Eat You?;Grassland 2.0:Restoring People&Prairie to Agriculture;WN@TL goes dark on Dec.22 and Dec.29

When I first arrived at UW-Madison in early January 1982, the Midwest was locked in a bitter arctic blast, with temperatures scraping down to -25F and beyond.  From the 8th floor of Russell Labs, Lake Mendota stretched out as one solid slab from the UW crew house to Governor’s Island.  I had seen the lake only in its fluid form during summer visits in 1979. I was astonished to see the entire span frozen, motionless, not a riffle, only wisps of snow blowing across the miles of wintry steppe.

And then there were the ice fishing shanties. What mad pursuit was this?  What breed of humans would trudge out upon this horizontal glacier, a four-foot auger in one hand, a five-gallon bucket bristling with stubby fishing poles in the other, a bottle of brandy in one pocket and a flask of schnapps in the other, merely to pluck the crappie and perch from below?   Down in Dixon, Illinois, where I grew up, folks rarely ventured out upon the frozen Rock River, for the current continued to flow beneath. Only the daring or the daft walked out on the white crust. You could get arrested, if you lived.

I began to get the impression that Madisonians had a different relationship with their lakes than my hometownians had with their river.

That winter Mendota remained locked rock solid all through February and March.  From our vantage point atop Russell Labs, as April approached we could see Wingra open up and Monona melt.  But it was big news that ricocheted through the building when someone first noticed that Mendota had at last returned to being a liquid lake:  Mendota was once again alive.

For the next two months the big lake was a basin of clarity, a lively limn, great for a swim or to just stick your toe in.  But in early June came the tinge and then the cringe, as week by week the algae came ablooming, and the northwest winds that swept in from across Picnic Point blew the green scum ashore at the Terrace.

To this day I like to envision Mendota as it clearly is in early May, when standing on a dock you can see its bottom on a calm sunlit Saturday.

Description:Lake Mendota is an amazing resource for the City of Madison and the UW. It isalso known as the best studied lake in the world. However, if you’ve spent time near theshoreline or on the lake, you know that it can get pretty ugly in the summertime. Blue greenalgae have plagued the lake since at least the 1850’s and continue to contribute to beachclosures and generally poor water quality. They make toxins that poison dogs and occasionallyhumans. Why do these nasties appear in our lakes every summer? How worried should wereally be about swimming and water skiing in the lake? What can we do to make them go away?The McMahon lab studies the water microbiome and this WN@TL will focus on our recentfindings related to the blue-green algae specifically.