Available From UC Press

Lakes change constantly in response to their surrounding landscape, and their airshed. Mirror Lake, located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, has been carefully researched since the 1960s. This book, edited by Thomas C. Winter and Gene E. Likens, summarizes and interprets the extensive data collected on this lake and its watershed from 1981 to 2000, a period during which the lake was affected by a variety of climate conditions as well as significant human activity. The findings documented also identify the panoply of chemicals influenced by limnological processes and include percentages of inflow sources, percentages of water loss from seepage, surface outflow, and evaporation, and the effect of water flow on the lake nutrients.

Thomas C. Winter is a senior research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Gene E. Likens is the Director and President of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.

"This fine book shows how long term, cross-disciplinary research can reveal the functioning of ecosystems through time and space. One can only wish that F-A Forel, who more than a century ago invented such a strategy for his study of Lake Geneva, could know how far we have come."—William M. Lewis, Jr., University of Colorado at Boulder

"The long-term study of Mirror Lake is appropriately referred to as an ecosystem puzzle. It serves as a template for comprehensive investigations of lakes and their links to both air and watersheds. The findings provide insight about how a lake system functions, varies in response to forcing factors and might change over time. This is a handbook for students, researchers and lake managers."—Jack Jones, University of Missouri

"Mirror Lake is a great lake: not because it is large, or remarkably old, or pristine, or unique, but because this lake is the focus of intensive, long-term, ecological study by persistent and talented scientists. The researchers reveal the past and present, and the potential future of this lake ecosystem and others in somewhat similar situations. The dynamics and processes of lake biogeochemistry are documented comprehensively from 1981 to 2000 through measurement and analyses of hydrology and chemistry. The detail and documentation of what is often the primary published source will deter many from a close read, but will assure others that the conclusions and insights gained are well founded and important. Still others will appreciate and learn from the completeness of the methods and data and analyses, and the explicit consideration of uncertainties. Insights about the changes in the lake and possible futures for lakes deserve the attention, not only of those researching Mirror Lake, but also of those attempting to understand, manage, and protect lakes with considerably less site-specific information."—John J. Magnuson, University of Wisconsin-Madison