This winter marks a troubling milestone for the Great Lakes region as ice coverage plummeted to its lowest point since records began in 1973. Michigan Tech University biologists have been dedicated to studying a remote Lake Superior island's fragile wolf population every winter since 1958. However, this season's planned survey had to be canceled due to the near absence of ice.
The Great Lakes, spanning a combined surface area comparable to the size of the U.K., traditionally serve as a landing strip for researchers. In recent decades, ice coverage typically peaks in mid-February, reaching up to 91 percent coverage at times. This year, only 3 percent of the lakes were frozen by mid-February, a stark contrast to historical averages.
Trista Vick-Majors, an assistant biology professor at Michigan Tech, emphasizes the urgency of the situation. \"This year really drives home the point that we need to collect more data. There's just no way you can predict how an ecosystem is going to respond to the large-scale changes we're looking at,\" she stated.
The dramatic reduction in ice not only hampers scientific research but also signals broader environmental shifts. As climate change accelerates, the impacts on the world's largest freshwater system are becoming increasingly severe, raising concerns about the future of aquatic ecosystems and the species that depend on them.
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Scientists seek to understand impacts of lack in ice of Great Lakes
cgtn.com
