The Lake Superior Ecosystems Research Center

Director: W. Charles Kerfoot, PhD

The Lake Superior Ecosystems Research Center (LaSER) is directed and staffed by faculty in biological sciences, forestry, geology, and environmental engineering. Participation is open to faculty interested in interdisciplinary projects.

The center's research focuses on basic ecosystem processes within the aquatic and terrestrial portions of the Lake Superior watershed. The long-term goal is to understand the ecosystem and to predict the ecological consequences of future change in the land, water, and atmosphere of the Lake Superior basin.

Graduate activities at the center include projects on exotic species (such as lamprey, spiney cladocerans, and zebra mussels), work with remote-sensing data (gathered by earth-orbiting satellites), submersible dives (using the Seward Johnson ship and the Johnson Sea Link submersible), mining impacts on Lake Superior food webs, and Isle Royale ecosystems.

Michigan Tech's setting near the world's largest freshwater lake (Lake Superior)-and the many nearby lakes, rivers, streams, and the extensive woodlands that cover Michigan's Upper Peninsula-provides an exceptional array of aquatic and terrestrial research sites. Field research is supported by special equipment such as our thirty-foot, diesel-powered boat (the R.V. Navicula) used for sampling on Lake Superior, and several smaller boats for inland lakes and rivers. The "Lake Lab" has sixty-four controlled-environment aquaria, a greenhouse, and individual research laboratories. Chemical and other analyses of environmental samples are supported by special facilities for work with water and soil, in addition to individual analytical facilities in faculty/graduate student research labs.

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