Castle Lake Newsletter - May 2007 | Castle Lake Limnology Research Station

Join us for the Castle Lake Reunion this summer 2007!
An invitation from Dr. Charles Goldman.

Dear Students, Friends, and Associates of Castle Lake, California:


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Lend me your eyes! After nearly half a century of research, teaching and good times, we are having the Castle Lake 50 Year Reunion this summer at the lake on July 20, 21 and 22. Get it on your calendar now for I would hope to see most of you there. We will have a small seminar as a reminder of the Science and a major party with all the courses you remember from days of yore. The main reason is to recall the science that was done, with the comradely that Castle lake has always provided, and to help revitalize our research program as we enter a new and exciting phase of research. We will have time to tell the best stories from the past and you will enjoy seeing our old friends from years that have flown past so fast since graduation. Jobs and marriages have now scattered us across the country and the world. One of the longest continuous data sets and a lot of good science over the years together with some great parties are worth recalling while we are all still young enough to enjoy the memories and the outdoor. The Methodist camp has already been rented for logistic support so that your whole families can attend the reunion and camp out or stay in motel accommodations in Mt. Shasta City during the weekend. There will be both art and music, and a great string quartet playing on the new raft in the middle of the lake. Just imagine the fabulous acoustics that the cirque basin will create. See the energy efficient use of solar power and the lab much as you remember it. Over the years the food has gotten better and better as the chief chef has honed his skills.

Now close your eyes for a moment and remember the beauty of the Mt Shasta as you looked across the valley at that exquisite monument to nature. You will remember that we always refer to Castle Lake as the garden spot of the Siskiyou Mountains, and in my view it is probably the most beautiful small Lake in California. Some still believe it is the spiritual vortex of California. Many of you did your graduate research at the lake, were post docs, were teaching assistants, or were class members who patiently stood on the ice while we chopped our way through to the water, or were visitors on one or more of our many field trips. Those of you who were fortunate enough to spend one or more summers at Castle Lake will remember the montaigne splendor of this exquisite mountain paradise. Please visit the Castle Lake website (http://castlelake.ucdavis.edu) to refresh your memory on the scientific discoveries, published research papers that have piled up during the last half century. I still remember in the early Spring of 1959 when I first cracked through the ice with a 2 x 4 and a rake in the company of Cal Fish and Game researcher Joe Wales who utilized the lake to test a variety of rainbow trout and Brook trout stocking procedures. He told me that there were alder trees on one side of the lake that I could test for nitrogen fertilization of the lake. I can hardly wait to see you all again. Please plan now to come. and remember you can bring children and loved ones if you like. It is after all time to share the beauty of the lake and relive the Castle Lake experience of your youth.

See you in July.

Kind Regards,
Charles R. Goldman

UC Davis and the University of Nevada- Reno embark on a collaborative research effort at Castle Lake

Starting in 2007, the University of Nevada-Reno and University of California- Davis are embarking on a collaborative partnership to promote research activities and education programs at the Castle Lake research station. While both Universities are already working together to save Lake Tahoe, the new partnership will focus on continuing the long-term research program and expanding the scope of research at Castle Lake.
Sudeep Chandra, an Assistant Professor of Limnology at the University of Nevada is enthusiastic about the venture and the opportunities it will provide his students. He said, "I was turned onto limnology after taking Dr. Goldman’s class and dropping Schindler traps with Dr. Michael Brett [then Castle Director and now an Associate Professor at the University of Washington] at the lake. After spending two summers at the lake, I was completely trained in basic limnological sampling methods and finally understood the dynamic nature of lake ecosystems. I am truly excited that my students will be able to have the Castle experience".

Dr. Goldman, who started the Castle Lake Program in 1959 is particularly interested in the partnership because of the opportunity for collaboration between institutions towards a more diverse and robust research program at Castle Lake.

It is clear that both institutions and their students are going to benefit from this program. Long-term research programs are difficult to establish and once they are up and running are of great scientific value and important to continue. With this in mind, both Dr. Goldman and Dr. Chandra urge all interested in the past present and future of research at Castle Lake to sign up for the Castle reunion this summer, come revisit the lake and the lab, and give the directors suggestions on the new vision for their joint research program.

Long-term research and monitoring program to expand

As part of the new UC Davis UNR collaborative research effort at Castle Lake, the Castle Lake Long-term Research Program is being expanded. The primary goals of this expansion are to:

Develop a basin scale approach to the long-term monitoring program at Castle Lake, taking a landscape level perspective on the physical, chemical, and biological ecosystem components as well as their drivers, and interactions.
Expand food-web research and monitoring to encompass multiscale connectivity and temporal dynamics and subsidies across the aqua-terrestrial ecotone.
Explore and track the effects of climate change on the basin and its ecology.
Combine historic data from the long-term monitoring with this new expanded data set in a series of models (ecologic/ food-web, air/water quality, and climatologic) to serve as an active data repository supporting a new degree of focus in Castle Lake research and discovery.

To help flesh out the details, processes and methodologies underlying these goals, in the spirit of this new bi-university collaboration, Dr. Goldman and Dr. Chandra hosted parallel field seminars at their respective institutions during the fall quarter of 2006 focused on food-webs from a landscape perspective (discussion topics and references from these courses are available on the Castle Lake website http://castlelake.ucdavis.edu/). The parallel discussions in the two courses culminated in a joint field trip in early November 2006 where the two groups met, discussed their developing ideas, and joined forces in a whole lake food-web sampling. Dr. Goldman and Dr. Chandra plan to begin implementation of this expanded long-term research effort during the summer 2007 field season.

Castle Lake Long Term Research Program to select board of directors


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In addition to expansion and diversification of long-term research at Castle Lake, the Castle Lake Long-term Research Program will be, for the first time, selecting a board of directors to guide the program into this new era in its evolution. Both Dr. Goldman and Dr. Chandra feel that this new organizational step will improve management of the facility, diversify the knowledge base supporting research and facilitate collaboration across disciplines and Universities. Individuals interested in serving on the Castle Lake board of directors should contact the Castle Lake Long-Term Research Program by writing to: castlelake@gmail.com.

Recently Published and Presented

Publications

M.J Vander Zanden, S Chandra, S Park, Y Vadeboncoeur, and CR. Goldman. 2006. Efficiencies of benthic and pelagic trophic pathways in a subalpine lake Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 63(12): 2608-2620.
D C. Müller-Navarra, MT. Brett, S Park, S Chandra, A. P. Ballantyne, E Zorita and Charles R. Goldman. 2004. Unsaturated fatty acid content in seston and tropho-dynamic coupling in lakes. Nature 427: 69-72
Park, S., M. T. Brett, E. T. Oshel and C. R. Goldman (2003). "Seston food quality and Daphnia production efficiencies in an oligo-mesotrophic Subalpine Lake." Aquatic Ecology 37(2): 123-136.

Presentations

Waetjen, D.P., Viers, J.H., Hollander, A.D., Quinn, J.F., Goldman, C.R.,“Building a Global Data Repository for Freshwater Lakes: Open Source Standards and Semantic Methods Enrich Scientific Results”, presented at ASLO International Conference, Victoria, Canada, 2006.
Henery, R, Chandra, S, Goldman, CR. Growth and essential fatty acid accumulation in rainbow trout reared in benthic vs. pelagic habitats. – Presented at ASLO international conference – Santiago De Compostela, Spain 2005.
Ger, KA, Derlet, RW, Carlson, JR, Goldman, CR. Variation in Bacterial Biomass in a Sub-alpine Recreational Lake: Evidence for Pelagic Photoinhibition. Presented August 2004 at the 29th SIL Congress, Lahti, Finland.

Grants and Funding

In 2005 The Castle Lake Long Term Research Program received a generous grant from the McConnell/ Shasta Regional Community Foundation. The funds from the foundation were provided in support of improvements to Castle Lake Limnological Laboratory towards the long-term goals of lessening the facility’s ecological footprint, setting a standard for green field station operation, and increasing potential for community outreach and education. Thanks to these improvements to the Laboratory’s solar electric system and transition to a solar hot water system have begun. A new Weatherhawk weather station has also been added and updates and repairs to the interpretive signs as well as construction of a new composting toilette are slated for completion in Summer 2007.

To support the expansion of the monitoring program, Dr. Goldman and Dr. Chandra will be submitting a new Long Term Research Grant proposal. In the interim, the Castle Lake Lab is being supported by bridge funding from the University of Nevada Reno and the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy and contributions from various private donors.

What’s new at Castle lake: Summer 2006 – Field Report

Though collaborative research efforts between UNR and UC Davis do not officially begin until the summer 2007 field season, summer 2006 field research was also supported by a field crew representing multiple institutions. Among them was Mike Reymann, a Senior at Chico state and student of UC Davis Graduate, now Chico State Professor Dr. Michael Marchetti’s. In addition to being a fish lover, (and fishing guide) Mike has a fascination with aquatic invertebrates. He put this interest to use, working with Dr. Chandra and graduate student Rene Henery to reinstitute benthic invertebrate sampling as part of the long-term monitoring program.


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Also adding to the institutional diversity in last summer’s Castle Lake crew was Dan-Viet Duong, a graduating senior from UC Santa Cruz. Dan-Viet completed his unit requirement for his Santa Cruz Environmental Studies Major with an internship working at Castle Lake with Rene Henery on his study of Growth and Essential Fatty acid accumulation in Rainbow trout (research description available on Castle Lake website http://castlelake.ucdavis.edu/). Dan-Viet was the first student from UC Santa Cruz to intern at Castle Lake. However, both the Castle Lake Research Program, and the UC Santa Cruz internship coordinator were so pleased with the results that this opportunity may be made available to UC Santa Cruz students regularly beginning in the summer of 2007.

In addition to Mike and Dan-Viet, the Castle Lake crew was composed of UC Davis Students Heather Bowen and Teejay O’Reer. In addition to their other summer duties, Heather and TJ worked with Dr. Chandra to reincorporate nutrient limitation bioassays into the monitoring program. Teejay also resumed regular monitoring of gut contents in rainbow and brook trout caught over the course of the summer.

The 2006 summer crew was headed up by manager Jacquelyn Brownstein. Prior to working at Castle Lake, Jacquie, who graduated in 2005, had been working for the Goldman Research Group in the UC Davis lab. Since the completion of the 2006 summer field season Jacquie has moved to Reno where she is working with Dr. Chandra’s Research Group as Lab manager.

This summer’s crew at Castle Lake also continued the program’s goal of expanding community outreach and education by hosting field trips for students ranging from third grade to high school. However, perhaps most appreciated by the greater community of Castle Lake visitors was the crew’s construction of a new (slightly larger) raft that brought simultaneous improvements in both pelagic sampling and sunbathing.

Opportunities

Summer 2007 field crew - Hiring is just beginning for the 2007 summer field season. Several researcher positions as well as the station manager position are still open. Responsibilities of the summer crew include field work and analysis in support of the long term data set, upkeep of and scheduled improvements to the facility, and hosting field trips and community focused educational events.
Summer 2007 field internship - In addition, to support the expansion of the long term research and monitoring, several internship positions will also be available at Castle Lake this summer. Positions will range from units to units with stipend depending on the needs and qualifications of the student and are targeted at undergraduate students interested in environmental science and field based studies, learning from UC Davis, UNR, and other institutions.
Spring quarter 2007 Laboratory internships – Internship opportunities to build lab experience and earn units are available for Spring quarter 2007 with the Goldman Research Group. Principal duties may include nutrient analysis of water samples, zooplankton and aquatic macroinvertebrate identification and counting, and data mining and analysis.

For more information or inquiries about any of these opportunities please refer to the Castle Lake Website (http://castlelake.ucdavis.edu/) or contact the Castle Lake Long Term Research Program by sending email to castlelake@gmail.com. Friends of Castle Lake are encouraged to forward and circulate these postings to anyone they feel might be interested.

Featured Photos

For more photos, please visit the Castle Lake Photo Gallery at: http://castlelake.ucdavis.edu/?q=gallery

Castle Lake Limnology Research Station

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