Lake Erie

Winters on the Great Lakes are harsh – so much so that the scientists who work there often focus on the summer months, when tiny microbes at the base of the food chain were thought to be most productive. However, emerging research is changing our understanding of these winter ecosystems and shining a light on a vibrant world of winter activity just below the ice. Scientists discovered in the early 2000s that communities of diatoms – tiny photosynthesizing algae – were thriving in the light under the wind-swept lake ice. But, it turns out, that was only part of the story. As the Great Lakes’ winter ice disappears – it hit record lows in the winter of 2023-24 – new analyses show that some diatoms appear to have a different way to create energy and survive in the dark, turbid ice-free water until summer. A thin slice of Lake Erie ice collected by a scientist has diatom algae growing on the bottom....