SPOONER — Climate change and how it affects northwestern Wisconsin lakes was the topic at the Northwest Wisconsin Lakes Conference Friday, June 21, at Spooner High School.
Youth speaker Zoie Babcock, a seventh-grade student from Mercer, spoke on climate change in Wisconsin.
“Where was the snow?” she asked of this past year.
Babcock said where she lives, they had maybe 1 inch of snow in January, and her research has shown that since 1880, global average temperatures have increased and are expected to be 2.7% warmer by 2050. Wisconsin has become warmer since the 1950s, even though the state has seen more precipitation over those years, she said.
This has a huge impact on Wisconsin lifestyles, Babcock said, as it affects our habitats, economy and overall well-being. A large part of Mercer is tourism, and that and the forest management industries have been affected, as well. Wildfires are increasing and many animals cannot thrive in these harsh winters, including fish and plant life, since the rising water temperatures affect certain species of fish.
“Can we really do anything about climate change in Wisconsin?” Babcock asked. “Yes.”
She encouraged people to help cut down greenhouse gas emissions, protect habitat and learn how to adapt.
The keynote presentation was given by Northland College professor Tom Fitz, who has studied northern Wisconsin geology and lakes for decades. He has worked on a wide variety of research topics with his students, including ancient bedrock and modern soils, and has earned numerous teaching awards.
Fitz said he has been studying how glaciation and river erosion sculpt our lands.
“It’s a great day when we get together to celebrate the lakes of Wisconsin,” he said of the conference.
So much of what happens in northern Wisconsin is geological legacy of an area, he said, and 14,000 years ago, glaciers shaped the state.
Since Wisconsin residents love their lakes, it is good to be concerned about their health.
“Lakes are just part of the whole landscape,” Fitz said.
To be a lake, land needs the right topography and surface form, and the climate needs to be able to accommodate enough water for a lake.
“First thing, you need a hole in the ground, not a river,” Fitz said.
There are not many geological processes to make a hole to hold water. Wisconsin had volcanoes years ago, which made holes for water, but none exist currently. Caves that collapsed and created sinkholes are the source of many water areas.
Meteorites impacted these holes, as well, but most of Wisconsin’s lakes are associated with recent glaciation, Fitz said. The ice melted unevenly, and it also needed the right climate.
For example, Fitz said, in Death Valley, Calif., there are large holes but the hot climate does not allow water in these holes. In the southwestern United States, these warm temperatures also prevent much water, and other places in the United States have plenty of water but not enough holes in the ground.
Northwestern Wisconsin gets about 30 to 32 inches of rain yearly, which Fitz said is enough to fill the landscape since we have precipitation year-round.
Wisconsin’s geology goes billions of years back to the Pleistocene Era of the Ice Age, which began about 2.5 billion years ago.
“Ice left here like probably 15, 14,000 years ago,” Fitz said.
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was the last glacial maximum about 23,000 years ago, he added.
Southwestern Wisconsin has a driftless area because the ice never made its way down there, so there aren’t as many lakes in that area.
The glaciers transported and deposited minerals and sediment as they melted, called the “glacial till.”
“It’s a really kind of messy process,” Fitz said of the glacial melting.
Lakes fall into different lobes in northwestern Wisconsin, and this area falls between the Chippewa and Superior lobes.
Kettle lakes are also important, Fitz said, and we have many. They came from a deranged drainage pattern from unconnected rivers and are holes in an outwash plain formed by retreating glaciers or draining flood water, formed as a result of blocks of dead ice left behind. In Barron County, there are many kettle lakes and an esker, which is a river underneath the ice.
The Chippewa Flowage in Sawyer County has a different shape because the flow was impeded by the Winter Dam, which can fill a landscape over a short term to create a flowage.
Lake Superior’s watershed goes north all the way through the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean, Fitz said, and south to the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.
The Penokee Range has bedrock holes.
Fitz said to think about the water budget and “always know what happens when water falls from the sky. That’s the only way it gets here.”
Water can evaporate or flow out as surface water or to plants, as well.
Pigeon Lake is unique, he said, as the water level has been rising, and this caused several houses to become submerged and damaged along Highway N. Similarly, in Shell Lake in the early 2000s, the water level rose and flooded cabins. Fitz said this may have been due to the County Highway D expansion, and water had to be siphoned out, though it only lasted one season.
The storms in July 2016 came with 10 days of each other, causing natural disasters throughout northwestern Wisconsin, and strong winds that came afterward did not help.
Shallow lakes become warmer in the summer, and deeper lakes are cooler. Fitz said these lakes don’t have a lot of biological productivity. Medium-depth lakes are somewhat warm, and these are called mesotropic lakes, allowing for warm-water fish.
Between 1880 and 1910, lots of trees were cut down in the Northwoods, which had a big impact on lakes, and the hydrology of the land changed, especially in Bayfield. The Chequamegon Bay water comes up fast when it rains and brings a lot of silt and clay.
Climate change is a big concern, too, Fitz said, and the length of time ice covers a lake is important. There has been a decreasing trend in ice cover on Lake Superior.
Fitz said to think of the lake as part of a bigger system and pay attention to “slow the flow.” He encouraged people to create rain gardens and think of them as a spiritual resource.
“Keep our lakes beautiful and clean,” he said.
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