About This Lesson
With support from the National Science Foundation, Lake Ecologist Jasmine Saros and her team from the University of Maine are plying the lake waters of southwestern Greenland, gathering samples of “diatoms” to study how climate change is affecting this Arctic ecosystem. Diatoms are a type of algae that responds rapidly to environmental change and leaves a fossil in lake sediments. Striking changes in communities of diatoms have occurred over the last 150 years. Diatom species generally associated with warmer conditions are increasing at unprecedented rates in the sediment record.
