In October, two University of Maine graduate students visited LEA to collect sediment cores from Long Lake and Highland Lake. Both Simona Lukasik and Ben Burpee are advised by Professor Jasmine Saros, who has sampled these lakes before. Maggie and Ben took the two out on our pontoon boat, assisted with the sampling, and collected some water column data for good measure. Simona will be measuring algal pigments in the cores to determine how land use changes have impacted lake algae and water quality over time. Pigments are like fingerprints used to identify algae that do not preserve well in sediments. The weather was perfect and the field work was a success.
