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16 February 2018
Chemical Cocktails Confound Phosphorus Management
It’s been fifty years since the Canadian government at the urging of the International Joint Commission set aside the Experimental Lakes Area near Kenora, Ontario in 1968 to conduct large-scale experiments in aquatic ecology. There, the young Director named David W. Schindler, who would go on to become a world-renown limnologist, and others conducted experiments with nutrient loading and produce one of the most iconic photos in the field of …
1 January 2016
Agricultural Runoff and Ohio’s Senate Bill 1
In response to the August 2014 shutdown of Toledo’s water supply due to microcystin contamination, the Ohio legislature passed Senate Bill 1, which regulates fertilizer and manure application to farm fields. Essentially, the new regulations prohibit spreading manure or fertilizer in the Lake Erie Watershed when soils are frozen, snow-covered or saturated, or if there is a more than 50% chance of at least one-half inch of rain in the …
16 November 2015
Field Drain Tile and the “Re-Eutrophication” of Lake Erie
Algae Blooms, Microcystin and Phosphorus It’s been over a year since Toledo, Ohio and surrounding communities shut down public water supplies due to an algae bloom and microcystin contamination in western Lake Erie. Was the trouble a “one-off” or can we expect more of these events in the future? While attending a seminar this year hosted by the Michigan Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, my interest was …
16 May 2011
MODIS Reveals Major Sources of Sediment
It’s mud season in the Midwest and the MODerate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250m true color band beautifully displays the tell-tale sediment plumes entering western Lake Erie (left). Updates of Great Lakes MODIS imagery are available here MODIS is a multi-band imaging instrument mounted on two Earth-orbiting satellites, the Terra, and the Aqua, both part of the NASA-led international Earth Observing System. Between the two of them, the entire Earth is …
John Freeland earned a PhD in Soil Science (Pedology) at North Dakota State University and is a consultant working in the private sector. He has published soils research and taught at the high school and college levels. John is interested in wetlands, soil genesis, science communication, the intersection of art and science, and soil-water-landscape processes. John lives near the Ohio-Michigan border and plays bass in multiple music projects.