Using citizen data to study longterm trends in lakes

CSI limnology researchers have just published a paper in PLoS One examining long-term water clarity trends in Midwestern US lakes. There are not enough researchers or government agency staff to collect data on lakes every week, let alone every month, or even every year! But, citizens living on lakes can, and many do. Noah Lottig lead a team of CSI researchers to compile data from some of the more long-running citizen science programs in the Midwest, including MN, IA, MO, WI, IL, IN, MI and OH. Check out the paper to see what they found!

UW and NSF both wrote stories about this paper. Nice work Noah, Ty, Emily NH, Kendra, Kathy, John and Craig (co-authors on the paper)! Also, a big thanks to Ed Bissell for database support and guidance for this effort.

Photo: Kathy Webster

All of this is thanks in part to the dedicated citizens who have spent years sampling their lakes, agency personnel who  help train them and sometimes maintain the databases, and also to Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, a papal astronomer, who invented the Secchi disk well over a century ago. The picture to the right shows a monument to him in the Villa Borghese Park in Rome that some CSI members STUMBLED upon while strolling in Rome one day a few years ago. The black and white pattern attracted the attention of the limnologists, and they paid homage to this important limnological historical figure (perhaps involving some bowing). Meanwhile, observers walking by the photographer (our very own Kathy Webster) were heard saying, “tourists will take pictures of ANYTHING in Rome”.  

Our plan is to continue to build our large, geospatial database, LAGOS, by integrating limnological data such as these citizen datasets with data from: state & federal government, tribal, and university data sources as well as a large number of geographic data sources to address further basic and applied science questions across broad spatial and temporal scales. More to come!