Trouters

Currently have the honor of spending some time at the Trout Lake Limnology Station as artist in residence.  The station is an active place - doing year round limnology research with undergrads, grads and doctoral students.  Housed in a little cabin on the edge of the "village," I work all day and have no obligations of any kind other than that.

Last night I was invited to attend the weekly Seminar held every Wednesday - I knew that there were other people at the Station - as there are cars in front of all the cabins and occasionally I see a young person walking to and fro.  But I was surprised when the room filled up with about 40 people!  Where did they all come from?  It's so quiet here - I generally assume no one is about.  Even at night, the call of the loons across the lake is the only noise I hear.  Last night I meant to go out and see the full moon - but fell asleep to those lovely loon calls.
 
The seminar yesterday was about a project called FLAME and another about freshwater mussel ecology with a walk to a mussel shoal near the station to see mussels in the field.  The FLAME project reminded me of something I had listened to while driving up here on  RADIOLAB.  The June 18th podcast is called EYE ON THE SKY.   The description of the program: 

Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?  In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast “Note to Self” give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.

What does this have to do with FLAME?  I can't remember the acronym - but the gist of the research is a way to look at an entire lake and see the changes in temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide.  How this is much more effective than doing a reading here or there --- or inserting a buoy in the middle of a lake and expecting that to give you an overall picture.  (Remember this is my take away with no real understanding of the science behind it).  The research Luke explained (sorry Luke I didn't get your last name, I'll insert it later....) reminded me of EYE ON THE SKY.  Lake surveillance - not with cameras, but with this little gizmo (how is that for a scientific name) that clamps to the end of your boat and uptakes water on a second by second basis as you zip back and forth across the lake.  This, in turn, gives you an overall picture of what is happening on the lake at any given time.

Our ability to capture time and move back and forth through it is amazing to me.  Boggles the mind.  Another thing for a solitary artist to muse about alone in a cabin in the woods.

Oh, what is a TROUTER?  That is the name given to those of us staying at the station by Tim Kratz, Station Director.