98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

FT 2

CANCELLED University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center, Land O’Lakes, WI (OVERNIGHT TRIP)

NOTE: This is an overnight trip which will depart the morning of Saturday, August 4 and return the evening of Sunday, August 5. Experience the northwoods while learning about the rich ecological history of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center (UNDERC), a 7500 acre site on the state line between Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The UNDERC site will become a NEON core site in the Great Lakes Domain with a fully instrumented flux tower, soil array, and full suite of organismal sampling (see www.neoninc.org). Diverse aquatic habitats include nine dystrophic bogs, many permanent ponds and small lakes, vernal ponds and marshes. Area forests are largely second-growth northern mesic hardwood consisting of aspen-birch, pine, or swamp-conifer with some red or sugar maple-hemlock. This great diversity of habitats makes UNDERC an excellent location for aquatic and terrestrial research. UNDERC staff will guide tours of this unique property. UNDERC’s scientific value was realized early on by Edward A. Birge of the University of Wisconsin, who sampled most of the UNDERC lakes in the 1920s. An early notable science contribution was a whole-ecosystem experiment performed in 1951 by Arthur Hasler, examining the impact of increased water clarity on algal photosynthesis, trout predation efficiency and consequent shifts in community composition. UNDERC continues to be the principal site for whole-lake ecological experimentation in the United States – e.g., testing an innovative approach to controlling nutrients that enter the environment from non-point sources and studying the natural production of methane in aquatic and wetland habitats. Participants should be able to hike in moderate terrain.  YOU WILL NEED TO BRING YOUR OWN LINENS AND TOWELS FOR YOUR OVERNIGHT STAY AT THE RESEARCH CENTER.