Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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Winter 2008

ASC Droplets

The Sea Grant educational partnership COSEE Great Lakes uses the book Paddle-to-the-Sea, by Holling C. Holling, as its inspiration for linking the Great Lakes to the ocean. Now David Hart, Wisconsin Sea Grant GIS specialist, has developed an exciting program that uses Paddle’s travels to link real-time Great Lakes data to Google Earth’s mapping application. It includes themes, key words, and Web sites from each chapter, along with path of Paddle’s journey to the sea and links to Great Lakes data. Visit his program at http://seagrant.wisc.edu/digitalgreatlakes/.

The recent IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, also known as “Climate Change 2007,” includes many insights as to how climate change will affect the Great Lakes Region, especially if lake levels continue to decline. Potential impacts include shallow navigation channels, loss of critical wildlife habitat, less potential for hydropower, more disputes over water quantity and increased illness from water contamination. The full IPCC report is available at www.ipcc.ch.

Cleaning up nearly 600 contaminated sites, implementing a law to protect groundwater quantity, and increasing efforts to address groundwater contamination from manure are among the advances Wisconsin made in 2007 in protecting groundwater, according to a recently released report to the Wisconsin Legislature. The report also summarizes major groundwater concerns in Wisconsin and recommends future directions for protection activities. The 2007 Groundwater Coordinating Council Report to the Legislature can be found at http://dnr.wi.gov/org/water/dwg/gcc/rtl/gccreport.htm.

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The Aquatic Sciences Center is the administrative home of the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute & University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute.

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