WXPR Field Notes

For this month’s Field Notes, Gretchen Gerrish of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station tells us of the life and death of leaves.

In this month’s Field Notes, Susan Knight looks at the thin ice situation this year, and discusses why ice is so cool.

If you are a winter enthusiast, we are off to a great start this year. Snowshoers, skiers, and snowmobilers have had excellent snow conditions. To add to the great snow conditions, we have enjoyed relatively mild temperatures. So how does snow form and what are the different types of snow?

With wide eyes and anticipation, many stare to the skies on the night of December 24 th to watch for the outline of a tiny sleigh and eight flying reindeer. But, how did Santa first come about?

Botany of Thanksgiving Everyone has their own list of things to be grateful for at Thanksgiving. Along with your thoughts of turkey and football, take a minute to appreciate the plants, yes, the plants, that originated in the Americas, that add flavor, color and nutrition to your Thanksgiving table. T hese plants include corn, beans, squashes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cranberries. You might not realize that these plants are all New World species, that is, they originated in the Western

In this month's installment of Field Notes, Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses how the Lacey Act protects rare trees around the world. We can all appreciate the beauty of wood. Aesthetically by its color and grain and scientifically by its carbon negative environmental footprint. Substituting wood for non-renewables is wise choice for consumers. Last week I had the opportunity to see some beautiful wood samples on the UW-Madison campus in the USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Collection.

It’s the second Tuesday of the month, which is when we hear from our commentators in the field. This week, Gretchen Gerrish of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station tells us about darkness as a resource. Sitting on a boat in the middle of Crystal Lake under a full moon, I can see a few stars around the sky’s perimeter, clearly see the outline of trees, differentiate the light-colored concrete of the boat landing and see the details of my student intern’s face as she rows us out to the deep spot to

Susan Knight of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station is enjoying her summer by doing aquatic plant surveys, and she may be coming to your lake soon. She tells us about it for this month's Field Notes. It is summer, and lots of folks are out waterskiing, fishing or paddle boarding on our area lakes. That is all well and good, but for me, the best way to enjoy a lake is to do an aquatic plant survey. Yes, I am a complete plant nerd, but, honestly, these really are fun and even important. There is a

In this month's installment of Field Notes Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses bird’s-eye wood, some of the most beautiful material a woodworker can use. When I say “figure in wood” you may not be familiar with the phrase. But if I say bird’s-eye maple, an image of beautiful swirls pops into your mind. There are many other types of wood figure such as curly, tiger stripe, fiddleback, and quilted, but I would like to focus on bird’s-eye today. First, we should cover some basic wood anatomy.

Years ago Dave Daniels from Rhinelander heard of a research project that really interested him, but he never heard what came out of the project so he sent a question to WXPR’s Curious North series asking us to look into it: What ever became of the Little Rock Lake Acid Rain research project conducted by water scientists at the Trout Lake research station near Boulder Junction? For this month’s Field Notes, Susan Knight recounts the entire story of Little Rock Lake, the site of an experiment