Occasionally we send out a small e-mail newsletter listing major additions to this website, and detailing the QA/QC changes to posted data. Sign-up here if you would like to be added to (or removed from) our list of recipients .

What's Old Archive

December 11, 2000

RUSS Data, as of 12/7/2000:

( * Temp, pH, EC, DO, DOSat, and Turbidity )

November 30, 2000

The WOW home page has a new look. We've added two features that showcase our data visualization tools to first time visitors.

November 28, 2000

Water-on-the-Web was featured in Science (10 Nov 2000 vol 290 issue 5494)! The Science NetWatch Education section (edited by Jocelyn Kaiser) said the following about WOW:

"Earth-gouging glaciers retreating northward at the end of the last ice age blessed Minnesota with its 12,000 lakes. Several of those lakes now form the centerpiece of Water on the Web, a site for teaching high school and first-year college students science and math concepts through lessons on limnology, or the study of lakes, rivers, and streams.
A 21-page primer covers topics such as lake formation, food webs, and eutrophication (nutrient overload). It also explains such basics as the seasonal turnover of lake waters and a device, called the Secchi disk, used to measure water clarity. After boning up, students can download and analyze spreadsheets of near-real-time data collected from stations floating in four lakes and the St. Louis River. There are also a glossary, interactive Geographic Information Systems maps, and a good set of lake ecology links."

November 10, 2000

• Winter has arrived in Minnesota and although the lakes haven't frozen over yet we have pulled the RUSS units off. Keep checking back for news about winter deployment.
  
• Water-on-the-Web and Lake Access have won the 2000 Technical Excellence Award for public education and research, from the North American Lake Management Society, in recognition of extending effective and creative education in lake restoration, protection, and management. Rich Axler and Chris Owen were in Miami to receive the award.

November 2, 2000

It's finally happened -- there's too much RUSS data. Some browsers (Netscape in particular) will run out of memory if you direct the DVT applet to read the data for all of the lakes. So, until our new (more efficient & feature-filled) version of the DVTools is available, we suggest that you only load data from a subset of the available lakes.

October 30 , 2000

The Grindstone had to be removed entirely from the lake due to vandalism. All three anchor lines had been cut and the unit was found along the Audubon Center's shoreline. No equipment was lost but the cable will need some repair.

October 26 , 2000

The Grindstone and Independence units are off-line. Ice Lake and the two Minnetonka units are working.

October 12 , 2000

The National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) has a web site where precipitation data can be found along with data on atmospheric deposition of a number of things including nitrogen, chloride, and sulfate. There are two stations very near RUSS sites; MN16 is near Ice Lake and MN28 is about 1/4 mile from Grindstone Lake.

October 11 , 2000

WOW's sister project, Lake Access: Making Water Quality Data Real and Relevant for Minnesotans, has a new easy to remember URL- http://lakeaccess.org/. Lake Access focuses on the water quality of Twin Cities' lakes (that's Minneapolis/St Paul, MN to those of you not from these parts).

We've added a new section to the WOW site where you can see some images of the lakes, get limnology updates, and see what some of the WOW staff actually look like. Go to Notes.

A new way to look at ppm, ppb, and ppt can be found at Units And if you're wondering what the heck a hectare is go to Conversions.

September 25, 2000

A new organization entitled LakeNet with a website (http://www.worldlakes.org) has been recently advertised to the lakes community. We cannot attest to its quality or political purpose but a quick scan of the website shows it has some useful information and links and includes a list-server.

September 22, 2000

Grindstone, Ice, Halsteds, and West Upper are on-line. However, the Independence unit has decided to take a nap. We hope to be able to wake it up soon.

September 18, 2000

All but the Grindstone unit are alive and well. We're working to get a new, borrowed sonde on to the Grindstone unit this week.

What is dihydrogen monoxide and is it dangerous? Some think so, go to Water Facts

September 11, 2000

Both the Grindstone and Ice Lake units are not functioning as they should. Justin Watkins (ISWCD) will take a look at the Ice Lake unit today and we'll get down to Grindstone again this Friday. In the meantime there'll be no profile data reported for either lake.

August 29, 2000

The Grindstone Lake profiler seems to be stuck at 1.5 m so will not be reporting until we can get down there and check it out. We hope to have it back on line by this Thursday (8/31).

August 24, 2000

We will need to cut back on the number of profiles the West Upper unit is collecting to allow the battery to recharge. We normally get four profiles every 24 hours. For the next few days we'll only collect a 6am and 6pm profile. This should provide less of a power drain on the battery and allow the solar panels to catch up and bring the battery back to a full 12 volts.

August 14, 2000

The Grindstone Lake RUSS unit is back in service, and has been gathering data since August 9.

August 7 , 2000

The Lakes Independence, Minnetonka, and Ice Lake units are all up and running except pH on both Ice and West Upper are not being reported due to some probe problems. The Grindstone unit will be put back together this Wednesday (8/9) and if all goes well we'll have data to report the following day.

July 5, 2000

The Ice Lake, Lake Independence and Lake Minnetonka RUSSs are all on-line. The Grindstone unit has had some cable problems and has not been up since mid-June. The St Louis system ran for a while until the sonde took a beating in the Duluth ship canal.

June 5, 2000

Well, most of the lake RUSS units are up and running just fine. The Grindstone unit is having a problem communicating but still seems to be collecting data. Also, the pH probe on that unit is no longer working.

We are collecting data at the Duluth lift bridge now ! We are working on a way to present those data so check back for updates.

May 8, 2000

All of the lake RUSS units are up and running.

May 1, 2000

The Ice Lake RUSS is now up and running. We have several manual profiles that were taken since ice-off and they show that the lake turned over this spring. The lake did not mix in either the spring of 1998 or 1999.

April 19, 2000

FYI -- the current contents of the online RUSS profile database:

Lake	# of Profiles	# of Data Points *
Ice Lake	1997	128,787
Lake Independence	827	54,694
Grindstone Lake	521	65,615
Halsteds Bay, Mtka	712	35,759
West Upper Lake, Mtka	514	56,962

( * Temp, pH, EC, DO, DOSat, and Turbidity )

April 4, 2000

All of the WOW lakes are now ice free. Ice Lake went out 3/30 and Grindstone 3/31. We will be working this week and next to get RUSS back out on these two lakes. We are also closer to having a unit in the St. Louis River near the Duluth lift bridge.

March 27, 2000

The Halsteds Bay, West Upper Lake, and Independence RUSSs are now back on the ice free waters of the Twin Cities Metro Lakes. Take a look at the new data. The ice out watch continues for Ice and Grindstone Lakes.

March 18, 2000

Ice-off Minnetonka. This is the second earliest ice-off in 123 years! The earliest ice-out was March 11, 1878. Independence ice was gone 3/11/00.

March 17, 2000

Water, Webs & Widgets Teacher Workshop. High school and college science teachers are invited to spend June 12-16, 2000, in Minnesota handling cutting-edge technology for monitoring lakes and rivers. After attending, you'll be better equipped to help today's students apply basic science concepts to real-world problems. Cost: $50.

March 9, 2000

We have started an electronic newsletter to keep interested users informed of major changes we make to this website. It will also contain the details of any changes made to previously published RUSS data after it has undergone QA/QC review. To subscribe just tell us your e-mail address.

March 7, 2000

An animated tutorial: Using WOW Data with Excel is now available. It demonstrates how to create graphs using the weekly RUSS data spreadsheets (requires Flash plug-in).

February 28, 2000

Has spring really sprung? We're not sure but the warm weather and rain have made ice conditions iffy, particularly near the Twin Cities. The Independence and Minnetonka units were removed 2/25 and the Ice Lake unit is coming off today. If winter comes back we'll try to continue bringing you periodic manual profiles from each of the lakes.

February 7, 2000

A number of difficulties, including vandalism at the Lake Independence station, have led to intermittent data streams from the WOW lakes. Manual profiles have been posted (see "other data"). The systems are not very dynamic under the ice relative to the ice-free season, so there is little loss of information. Thanks to Brian Vlach (Hennepin Parks), Justin Watkins (Itasca Soil and Water Conservation District), and the NRRI staff for their persistence on some extremely cold days.

January 25, 2000

A user in Germany recently called to our attention an error in the teacher's conductivity lesson plan. A note there stated that differences in EC within a lake's profile are driven primarily by temperature. Temperature is important in conductivity but you won't be able to see that in the RUSS data. All RUSS and manual data here are reported as temperature compensated values. The WOW EC values represent the conductivity of that zone of water had it been measured at 25 C. This allows users to make easy comparisons between the EC values throughout the water column.

January 20, 2000

Lakes Independence and Minnetonka's Halsteds Bay RUSSs are working and data are posted.

January 13, 2000

The Lakes Independence and Minnetonka RUSSs are going out on to the ice today. Look for a progress update here shortly.

Ice Lake RUSS data should be available by the week of 1/17/00.

Recent Web page updates include: Updated ancillary data for all of the lakes and Grindstone Lake morphometry and oxygen and heat budgets.

January 3, 2000

The mild winter we're having has delayed ice-on and our winter deployments although all of the lakes are now, finally, ice covered. Ice Lake iced over in early December and Grindstone on 12/21/99. Independence and Minnetonka are also ice covered but recent warm weather has made us decide to wait a little bit longer before venturing out on to the Twin Cities lakes.

November 10, 1999

All 5 of the RUSS units have been taken off of the lakes. Some (or all) of them will be replaced as soon as possible after the lakes are frozen.

Lake	Removal Date
Ice Lake	11/3/1999
Lake Independence	11/4/1999
Grindstone Lake	11/8/1999
Halsteds Bay	11/10/1999
West Upper	11/10/1999

 

October 21, 1999

WOW's new web site was launched. Updated lessons and a user driven data section are among the changes. Please take a look at the new site, however, if you need the previous version, we still have it active, http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/original. (note: data in the orginial version is not being updated.)

September 2, 1999

WOW curriculum developer Jon Rowe, Grand Rapids High School biology teacher was recently named one of two Minnesota Forest Educators of the Year. Lt. Governor Mae Schunk presented the award to Jon because of his commitment to giving students hands-on exposure to the environment through tree identification and forest soils analysis lessons, among many other activities. For 18 years, Jon has sponsored Future Farmers of America forestry teams that have competed at the state level. Congratulations Jon!

August 30, 1999

Bruce Munson gets new digs! For Fall Semester 1999, Bruce Munson, the grand Pooh Bah of WOW, is spending a sabbatical at the WOW Complex at NRRI. He says he needs the peace and quiet to think and write; we think he just wants to be able to hassle Rich and George more easily. Give Bruce a welcome call at his new number: 720-4307.

WOW's third RUSS is put on Grindstone Lake.  

Eurasian Water Milfoil is found in Ice Lake by Justin Watkins and Al Waller of ISWCD.

The WOW team receives the University of Minnesota's Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Innovation Award! One of 8 awards given across the University, the award recognizes advances in linking advanced technology to education. Accepting the award for the team were Bruce Munson, Cindy Hagley, and George Host. To prove looks aren't everything, check out this picture of them receiving the award.

The Ice Lake RUSS is back. Ice off this year was 4/9/99.

RUSS returns to Lake Independence (ice off was 3/29/99). Two new RUSSs were also placed on Halsteds and West Upper bays of Lake Minnetonka as part of our new EMPACT Project with Hennepin Parks.