Mark Olson and Janet Fischer are a husband and wife team who study the ecology of mountain lakes. Together with their undergraduate students from Franklin & Marshall College and their two children, Mark and Janet have worked systematically over the last 13 years to build a unique long-term dataset for a set of lakes in Yoho and Banff National Parks. During this time, they have carefully documented the effects of catchment characteristics such as glacial and vegetation cover on water transparency, a key lake feature that is linked to colour. Mark and Janet have recently expanded their research to include high-frequency monitoring of lakes using advanced sensors. Their project aims to understand how and why lake transparency varies across time scales, from short-term changes in response to rain events to long-term changes in catchments caused by melting glaciers, lengthening growing seasons, and advancing treelines. They also study the effects of these changes on the unique plankton that inhabit mountain lakes.
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