We are very grateful for all the support and friendship of our WSU colleagues over the years! Following 4 years as a rotator division director at National Science Foundation, I accepted a new position as deputy director of the new Biosphere Sciences & Engineering division of Carnegie Institution for Science. The new division integrates biology from the molecular to ecological scales, and is being developed in collaboration with Caltech. Also, NASA JPL is nearby and I look forward to deepening connections with colleagues using remote sensing to understand biology at global scales. I am so delighted that postdoc Dr. Ryan McClure will be joining me, and many collaborations with keep me in touch with my WSU friends in coming years!

Wonderful to celebrate with recent PhD grads Dr. Michael Meyer, Dr. Alli Cramer and Dr. Brian Lanouette! 

New papers continue to emerge from our 2019 AGU Chapman Conference on Winter Limnology, many published in the special issue of JGR Biogeosciences that was developed at the conference. A recent one develops the Lake Ice Continuum Concept as a conceptual model for understanding how key aspects of the physical, chemical, and ecological structure and function of lakes vary along a continuum of winter climate conditions mediated by ice and snow cover. It is co-led by first authors who contributed equally – Emily Cavaliere, Isabelle Fournier, Vendy Hazuková, Garrett Rue and Steve Sadro.

A chapter of Michael’s dissertation – a peer-reviewed data paper from our Lake Baikal field seasons – has just been published in L&O Letters! Over 150 variables measured include sewage indicators, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and microplastics, with periphyton, macroinvertebrate, stable isotope, and fatty acid profiles. Public data on these variables in Lake Baikal have been extremely rare and we hope that these data will be useful in future studies and inspire others to share more data and knowledge on this important ecosystem.

We are excited to welcome a new postdoc to our research group! Dr. Ryan McClure is coming from a postdoc at Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies and Virginia Tech. Ryan is an ecosystem ecologist and aquatic biogeochemist. His experience includes working at the forefront of the rapidly evolving field of ecological forecasting, determining drivers of methane emissions in lakes, and understanding the dynamics of aquatic biogeochemistry under shifting oxygen conditions. In addition to his accomplishments in limnological scholarship, he has enjoyed working with lake managers to improve water quality in lakes and reservoirs.

Over 80 people convened online to watch Michael Meyer’s excellent seminar on 9 September 2021 when he successfully defended his dissertation “Effects of spatially and temporally heterogeneous human disturbance on littoral benthic communities in large, deep, oligotrophic lakes.” Michael is starting a new postdoctoral position this fall with the USGS, on a Mendenhall fellowship, based in Madison WI and collaborating with a terrific aquatic science team located throughout the U.S.  We are going to miss Michael tremendously, but we are all so proud and excited to see him to take this next step in his career.

Since it’s publication in June 2020, the Global Lake Area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset has already been used by at least two published manuscripts, one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Cuhn & Butman 2021) and one currently as a pre-print on Earth and Space Science Open Archive (Topp et al 2020).

• Topp et al (2020) Used the Landsat data to assess change in U.S. lake color from 1985-2020. Because their lake color data is built off the HydroLAKES database of lake shapefiles, they were able to merged lake color with the GLCP vis-a-vis consistent, unique identifiers for each lake. They then were able to use all GLCP variables as predictors of lake color change for over 26,000 lakes over 35 years!
• Cuhn & Butman (2021) used the GLCP’s basin:lake matching scheme, which allowed them to merge lake color landsat, permafrost, climate, and morphometry data into a single analysis.

We – as a team – are so excited that others are using the GLCP for applications beyond our own intended analyses! While we have our own analyses coming down the pipe, we’d appreciate hearing from you. If you used or are currently using the GLCP, please reach out so we highlight your work!

Michael F. Meyer (michael.f.meyer@wsu.edu)

Michael co-led a manuscript with Robert Ladwig (a postdoc at the Center for Limnology at University of Wisconsin Madison) to synthesize how six scientific societies either transitioned meetings to a virtual format or inaugurated new meetings altogether. In the manuscript, Michael and Robert had each society contribute a brief write-up generally addressing: What they did; What went well; what could have been better; what they would change. The manuscript had 30 co-authors, making it the most number of co-authors on a single publication in Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin’s history. You can read the Open Access publication here.

Following the publication of our L&O Bulletin piece on natural resource applications of the Global Lake area, Climate, and Population (GLCP) dataset, we were encouraged to submit a video abstract! The video abstract highlights the main features of the dataset, and also showcases how user-friendly the dataset is. Matt really hammers this point home in the video when he performs a live-coding demo, when in the span of 45-seconds, he is able to nearly recreate one of the analyses in the L&O Bulletin paper! Give it a look!

We are looking forward to a virtual reception for the ASLO 2020 awards! It is happening on 1 Dec 2020 at noon ET (9am PT). The Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin also featured a Q&A with the 2020 Awardees, and for those of us who were scheduled to receive the awards at the Summer 2020 meeting (cancelled due to COVID), our talks will be posted on the ASLO YouTube channel. All in all, it makes me feel very appreciated – thanks to ASLO!