U.S.-Germany Cooperative Research on Temporal and Spatial Coherence of Primary Productivity and Nutrient Cycling across Lake Districts of Northern Wisconsin and NE Germany

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9409364 Adams This award supports Professor Michael Adams and two graduate students of the University of Wisconsin at Madison to collaborate with Rainer Koschel and others of the Neuglobsow field laboratory of the Institute for Inland Freshwater Ecology, at the northern edge of Brandenberg State, Germany. This laboratory was once part of the East German Academy of Sciences, and was not easily accessible to Western limnologists. Together the two research groups will study coherence and other parameters of primary production patterns in U.S. and German lakes of similar biogeographical settings. In a related study, they will examine the effect of re- unification on water quality in the eastern states of Germany. Specifically they will collect and compare primary productivity and other limnological data from the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program site in northern Wisconsin and the Mecklenburg-Brandenburg lake district of northeastern Germany. The history of the land use pattern at each location, the relative location in the respective landscape in reference to the groundwater system, the regional climate, and information on nutrient loading and nutrient recycling will be incorporated into the analysis. This project is the first significant freshwater ecology collaboration on waters of the former East Germany. The region being studied is an extensive, important, post- glacial lake district, with more than 10,000 lakes greater than one hectare in surface area. Collaboration with local limnologists will be an interesting and valuable opportunity for participants in the Northern Temperate Lakes LTER site, and should be mutually beneficial to both research groups. Observed patterns in lake primary production may be associated with global change in climate. This is because lake systems can serve as integrators of environmental information, such as the effects of global solar radiation and thermal regimes on inorganic carbo n fixation through photosynthesis of lake phytoplankton. This research may be useful in contrasting such patterns between continents and at different latitudes, using otherwise similar biogeographic units. ***