Current Projects: Acidification in the Laurentian Great Lakes
One consequence of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is the acidification of oceanic waters. This same phenomenon may also impact the Laurentian Great Lakes, but has not been well-studied. This project brings together high-resolution buoy-supported data collection and intensive field sampling of chemical and biological systems in Lake Superior and Lake Erie to better understand the current status of the lakes' carbon systems and make predictions about the future. This study is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Current Projects: DARPA ICE
Microbes use myriad strategies to survive in changing conditions, ranging from the ability to enter quiescent state (such as spores), to increasing growth rates to take advantage of pulses of nutrients. Because much of Earth's surface is characterized by either seasonal or perennial sub-zero temperatures, another challenge that microbes must contend with is ice. Just as freezing and thawing damages human tissues (e.g., frostbite), ice crystals can also damage microbial cells. To contend with this, microorganisms employ mechanisms such as ice nucleating proteins and antifreeze proteins to control the formation of ice. This project aims to discover novel ways that microbes control ice formation and to optimize production of relevant biomolecules. We traveled to the Arctic in 2024 to collect microbial biomass from shallow thermokarst lakes near Utqiagvik, AK, which experience deep seasonal freezing, and collected samples from lakes subjected to more frequent freeze-thaw cycles in the Keweenaw Peninsula and are using those samples to explore the diversity of ways in which microbes control or influence ice formation. This study is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ICE program cooperative agreement HR0011-24-2-0338.
Current Projects: Winter Limnology Network
Winter is the fastest warming season in the northern hemisphere. For millions of the world’s seasonally-frozen lakes, this warming means shorter and thinner ice cover and changing patterns of snow accumulation on the ice. Because ice and snow affect many fundamental physical, chemical, and biological properties of lakes, changes in winter conditions can disrupt lake ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity. Until recently, lake scientists paid relatively little attention to winter, meaning we know very little about how lakes work when covered by ice and snow and how winter conditions affect the rest of the year. This leaves scientists ill-prepared to predict how changing winters will impact lakes or to mitigate negative impacts. This study addresses this “winter knowledge gap” and develops a predictive understanding of how winter conditions affect the ecological populations, communities, and food webs of diverse types of lakes. Find out more about the Winter Limnology Network here.
This study is supported by the National Science Foundation (Ozersky: #2306885, Dugan: #2306888, Hampton: #2306886, Sadro: #2306889, Vick-Majors: #2306887).
This study is supported by the National Science Foundation (Ozersky: #2306885, Dugan: #2306888, Hampton: #2306886, Sadro: #2306889, Vick-Majors: #2306887).
Current Projects: Understanding Changing Winters in the Laurentian Great Lakes
The Laurentian Great Lakes are the world’s largest reservoir of fresh water, but they impacted by multiple interacting stressors, many of which are related to climate change. Winter limnology represents a major gap in our understanding of the lakes’ responses to changing climate, which hampers our ability to manage these systems for resiliency. This research will use a networked science approach to conduct synchronous, standardized sampling across the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair to assess chemical, physical, and biological limnological aspects of these systems during winter and in subsequent seasons. Using a networked approach will allow us to achieve broad spatial coverage to put winter conditions and ecology in context, and facilitate predictions of future ecosystem responses to changing climate. This project builds off of the first time-synchronized winter sampling to span the Great Lakes, the 2022 Great Lakes Winter Grab. You can read about it on the Michigan Sea Grant website and in this article. This project is a collaborative effort between Michigan Tech, Lake Superior State University, Central Michigan University, and Oakland University, funded by Michigan Sea Grant.
Current Projects: Year-round monitoring on the largest Great Lake
Lake Superior, the deepest and most northern of the Laurentian Great Lakes (LGL), is one of the fastest-warming lakes in the world. The lake and region are significantly influenced by environmental issues related to coastal storms, shoreline erosion, fluctuations in lake level, and water quality degradation. One outcome of increasing temperatures is a decreasing trend in ice cover over the last 40 years, which is closely tied to earlier stratification and warmer summer water temperatures. Rising temperatures and changes in phenology have major ecological implications throughout the food web from fish to microorganisms, including increasing occurrences of early spring algal blooms and hypoxic events that can affect water quality. Our ability to predict these and other ecosystem responses to climatic change in the LGL and the resultant impacts on stakeholders is severely limited by a lack of real-time, high-resolution, year-round physical and biogeochemical observations. This project aims to fill this gap by conducting year-round, cabled observatory enabled monitoring of physical and chemical parameters in two sites on Lake Superior connected waters, the Keweenaw Waterway and the Saint Mary's River. This project is funded by the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS).
Previous Work: Permanently Ice-Covered Lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica
Sir Robert Falcon Scott, upon exploring the one of the Dry Valleys in 1903, called it a "valley of the dead". The mistake was understandable, given the apparently barren landscape of exposed rock, mountain glaciers, and ice covered lakes. But, Scott couldn't have been more wrong. The lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica are permanently ice-covered, cold desert oases. In the photo, Dr. Vick-Majors is working at Lake Fryxell during the austral autumn. While watching the Antarctic sun set for the winter, we were able to answer questions about how microorganisms and the biogeochemical cycles they mediate in the lakes, are impacted by the onset of winter darkness.
The projects were conducted in association with the McMurdo LTER, which has been monitoring the Dry Valley lakes since 1993, and was part of the International Polar Year.
The projects were conducted in association with the McMurdo LTER, which has been monitoring the Dry Valley lakes since 1993, and was part of the International Polar Year.
MIRADA
The Microbial Inventory Research Across Diverse Aquatic Long Term Ecological Research Sites (MIRADA LTERs) sampled two of the meromictic, permanently ice-covered lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys before and after the sunset. Then, we used massively-parallel, 454-based rRNA gene tag sequencing, to inventory archaeal, bacterial, and eukaryotic components of the microbial communities. Combining this approach with network analysis, we were able to identify organisms and interactions between organisms that are key to ecosystem function during the transition to winter darkness. We identified an autumn "bloom" of arterial phylotypes, which has also been observed in the Southern Ocean, and pinpointed keystone-type species of bacteria. The keystone phylotypes were all related to organisms that are known to behave mixotrophically, suggesting that physiological flexibility is important to the success of organisms in these oligotrophic, seasonally dark lakes. You can read the full paper here.
This work also led to the discovery of a novel ciliate and to new insights into ciliate diversity. You can find it here.
The Microbial Inventory Research Across Diverse Aquatic Long Term Ecological Research Sites (MIRADA LTERs) sampled two of the meromictic, permanently ice-covered lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys before and after the sunset. Then, we used massively-parallel, 454-based rRNA gene tag sequencing, to inventory archaeal, bacterial, and eukaryotic components of the microbial communities. Combining this approach with network analysis, we were able to identify organisms and interactions between organisms that are key to ecosystem function during the transition to winter darkness. We identified an autumn "bloom" of arterial phylotypes, which has also been observed in the Southern Ocean, and pinpointed keystone-type species of bacteria. The keystone phylotypes were all related to organisms that are known to behave mixotrophically, suggesting that physiological flexibility is important to the success of organisms in these oligotrophic, seasonally dark lakes. You can read the full paper here.
This work also led to the discovery of a novel ciliate and to new insights into ciliate diversity. You can find it here.
Tents in front of the Canada Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Photo by Trista Vick-Majors
Bacterioplankton during the transition to Polar Night
In spite of the fact that the microbial ecosystems of the McMurdo Dry Valley lakes have been studied for many years as part of the LTER, autumn and winter ecosystem dynamics are not well understood. Due to logistical constraints, research has mainly been limited to the summer months and little is known about ecosystem responses to the onset of winter and subsequent months of darkness. As a part of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, we were able to collect data as the sun set during the austral fall to better understand the physiological changes that may take place within the ecosystems during the seasonal transition to darkness. My M.S. research focused on the activities of the plankton communities during the change in season, looking specifically at light dependent primary productivity by phytoplankton, an organic carbon source, and bacterial productivity, an organic carbon sink. My work identified physiological shifts in bacterioplankton communities, which suggested that heterotrophic bacterioplankton may shift from active growth to maintenance mode as the sun set. You can read the paper here.
For information on protist communities during the polar night transition, check out this paper and this one.
In spite of the fact that the microbial ecosystems of the McMurdo Dry Valley lakes have been studied for many years as part of the LTER, autumn and winter ecosystem dynamics are not well understood. Due to logistical constraints, research has mainly been limited to the summer months and little is known about ecosystem responses to the onset of winter and subsequent months of darkness. As a part of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, we were able to collect data as the sun set during the austral fall to better understand the physiological changes that may take place within the ecosystems during the seasonal transition to darkness. My M.S. research focused on the activities of the plankton communities during the change in season, looking specifically at light dependent primary productivity by phytoplankton, an organic carbon source, and bacterial productivity, an organic carbon sink. My work identified physiological shifts in bacterioplankton communities, which suggested that heterotrophic bacterioplankton may shift from active growth to maintenance mode as the sun set. You can read the paper here.
For information on protist communities during the polar night transition, check out this paper and this one.
The field team in the Dry Valleys during the austral autumn. Photo courtesy of Anthony Buchanan.