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Barbara Benson

University of Wisconsin
223A Center for Limnology
680 North Park Street
Madison, WI 53706
bjbenson@wisc.edu
(608) 262-2573
http://limnology.wisc.edu/personnel/benson/

Research Projects

Lake Ice International Collaborations

North Temperate Lakes LTER researchers have collaborated with scientists from across the Northern Hemisphere who are interested in temporal and spatial patterns in lake ice phenology.  In 1996 a workshop was held at the Center for Limnology's Trout Lake Station.  The workshop was attended by an international ad hoc group of scientists who selected the group name Lake Ice Analysis Group (LIAG).  One product of these collaborations was a special session at the International Society of Limnology (SIL) meeting in Dublin, Ireland in 1998. Another significant accomplishment initiated at the 1996 workshop was the formation of a database of lake and river ice phenology. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has become the repository for this database that has been periodically updated and expanded. In 2008 a second lake-ice workshop was held at Lake Erken in Sweden with a focus on comparisons of Scandinavian and US Great Lakes Region ice phenology patterns.  Both the 1996 and 2008 workshops were funded by grants from the US National Science Foundation associated with the North Temperate Lakes LTER grants.

Lake Ice Analysis Group (LIAG)

The Lake Ice Analysis Group is an international ad hoc group of scientists (see attached list) who participated in the lake ice workshop held at the Center for Limnology's Trout Lake Station. The workshop was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison through a US National Science Foundation grant associated with the US Long-Term Ecological Research Network entitled "North Temperate Lakes : Global Generalization and Analyses of Lakescapes, Biodiversity and Ice Phenology."

Global Lakes Ecological Observatory Network GLEON

The Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network is a grassroots network of limnologists, ecologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a common goal of building a scalable, persistent network of lake ecology observatories. Data from these observatories will allow us to better understand key processes such as the effects of climate and landuse change on lake function, the role of episodic events such as typhoons in resetting lake dynamics, and carbon cycling within lakes.

Developing a model for engagement of citizen scientists: lake associations (CI-TEAM)

We have collaborated with the Lake Sunapee Protective Association (LSPA) with the overarching goal to bring this citizen scientist group into the development and use of CI, and, in the process, create and evaluate a model for engaging a broader citizen base in the articulation of needs, and the development and use of CI tools. This was done by focusing on three objectives: (1) create with citizen scientists CI to present real‐time and archived lake buoy data to the lay public in accessible and useful forms, while simultaneously training and transferring skills to the lake association; (2) educate and train computer science (CS) students to interact effectively with citizen scientists and lay communities to co-develop CI; and (3) develop a model that expands the reach and impact of CI and employ a method to assess its success.

Ice Phenology Workshop at Lake Erken, Sweden

Proposal

Ice Phenology Workshop: Comparing change in Scandinavia and the Great Lakes region

Long term observations of freeze and breakup dates for lakes and rivers across the northern hemisphere show consistent and widespread changes in ice phenology3. Recent analyses have focused on understanding geographic patterns in such changes4,5, and their consequences for aquatic communities6. Two regions of the world have a sufficient quantitiy of long term ice phenology records to allow for a detailed regional approach to understanding their patterns: the Laurentian Great Lakes region and Scandinavia. In both regions, ice phenology has changed more rapidly in warmer locations4,7; however, the influence of other meteorological variables (e.g., timing of snowfall, snow depth, and cloud cover) is not well understood. Overlain on this complexity is the combined impact of long term climate change and decadal scale oscillations.

We propose a workshop to begin a comparative investigation of ice phenology changes in Scandinavia and the Laurentian Great Lakes region. Ice phenology has been an active area of research for scientists at the NTL LTER site and its analogs in Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland. Using spatial analysis and time series techniques, we will investigate relationships between ice phenology, meteorological variables (snow and solar radiation), and large scale climate drivers (SOI, NAO, PDO, etc.). The contribution of individual lake characteristics (depth, surface area, and elevation) to these relationships will also be explored. The results will allow us to identify lake characteristics and geographic locations that are sensitive to climatically-induced changes in ice phenology. The workshop will also provide an opportunity to discuss available biological time series (zooplankton, fish recruitment, etc.) that may be compared with ice phenology, further develop aquatic research within the ILTER network and strengthen ties with long term ecological research sites in Sweden (potential ILTER sites).

This workshop is proposed for October 2007 at the Lake Erken field station of Uppsala University, Sweden with Barbara Benson, John Magnuson, Olaf Jensen (Ph.D. candidate) attending from the University of Wisconsin and, at a minimum, Gesa Weyhenmeyer (Uppsala University, Sweden), David Livingstone (Swiss Federal Inst. of Environmental Sci. and Tech.) and Johanna Korhonen (Finnish Environment Institute) attending as European partners.

3Magnuson, J.J. et al. 2000. Science 289:1743-1746; 4Jensen, O.P. et al. Limnology & Oceanography In review; 5Magnuson, J.J. et al. 2005. Verh. Internat. Verein. Limnol. 29:521-527; 6Weyhenmeyer, G. 2001. Ambio 30:565-571; 7 Weyhenmeyer, G. et al. 2004. Geophysical Research Letters 31:L07203.

Agenda

April 1

  • Arrivals
  • 6pm     Dinner

April 2

  • 7:30am Breakfast
  • 8:30am Welcome, logistics (Thorsten, Barbara)
  • Presentations on current research (related to ice) (15 min each)
  • Discuss goals for the week
  1. Go over available data, make accessible to everyone at workshop
  2. List of possible paper titles and data needs for each
  3. Preliminary list of people working on each topic in (2) and leader for each
  • 12-1pm Lunch
  • 1-5pm    Divide into smaller groups (~3 people each) focused around topics
    • Outline tasks associated with each topic (data compilation, analyses, figure generation, writing, etc
    • Kaffe Pause
    • Repeat small groups
  • 6pm Dinner

April 3

  • 7:30am  Breakfast    
  • 8:30am  Reports from groups
  • 12-1pm Lunch
  • 1-5pm   Analysis, outlining, writing, literature search, additional discussion
  • 6pm Dinner

April 4

  • 7:30am Breakfast     
  • 8:30am Reports from groups (with outlines, key findings, and results!)
  • 12-1pm Lunch
  • 1-5pm    Divide into topic groups and discuss plans for finishing manuscripts
    • Review proposal for ASLO meeting session
    • Discuss plans for future workshops, collaborations, etc.    
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Recent Publications

Benson BJ, Magnuson JJ, Jensen O, Card V, Hodgkins G, Korhonen J, Livingstone DM, Stewart KM, Weyhenmeyer GA, Granin NG.  2012.  Extreme events, trends and variability in Northern Hemisphere lake ice phenology (1855 - 2005). Climatic Change. 112:299-323.
Weyhenmeyer GA, Livingstone DM, M. Meili JO, Benson BJ, Magnuson JJ.  2011.  Large geographical differences in the sensitivity of ice covered lakes and rivers in the Northern Hemisphere to temperature changes. Global Change Biology. 17:268-275.
Ghanbari RN, Bravo HR, Magnuson JJ, Hyzer WG, Benson BJ.  2009.  Coherence between lake ice cover, local climate and teleconnections (Lake Mendota, Wisconsin).. Journal of Hydrology. 374:282-293.
Benson BJ, Bond BJ, Hamilton MP, Monson RK, Han R.  2009.  Perspectives on next-generation technology for environmental sensor networks.. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 8:193-200.
Benson BJ, Winslow LA, Arzberger PW, Carey CC, Fountain T, Hanson PC, Kratz TK, Tilak S.  2008.  Meeting the challenges of an international grassroots organization of sites deploying sensor networks: the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON). Proceedings of the Environmental Information Management Conference 2008. :33-38.
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Selected Datasets

Ice Phenology Database
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