Tribal Collaboration Continues

In mid-August, five GSS staff members and one student travelled to the Leech Lake Reservation in north-central Minnesota to collect lake sediment cores for a phosphorus flux analysis. Kevin Stark, Eric Lindquist, Kathy Allen, Randy Krainock, Mary Larson, and Katrina Danzinger, along with Jake Sorensen from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe (LLBO), sampled water quality and collected seven cores each from Bowstring and Round Lakes. The sediment cores will now be incubated in a lab on campus and sampled regularly to determine how much phosphorus is being released by the sediment.  This will help determine whether nutrients stored in the lake sediment may be contributing to high phosphorus levels (internal loading) or whether elevated phosphorus levels are due to outside sources, such as fertilizers and septic systems (external loading). Elevated phosphorus levels can trigger excess algal growth and cause declines in dissolved oxygen, which can kill fish and other aquatic life.