Understanding winter lake biology

UMD Associate Professor Ted Ozersky is the principal investigator on a newly funded project titled "Collaborative Research: Advancing a comprehensive model of year-round ecosystem function in seasonally frozen lakes through networked science." 

Funding supports the study of frozen lakes

Ted Ozersky in snow suit in the snow, holding an auger.

Ozersky is an associate professor in the Department of Biology and UMD's Large Lakes Observatory. He studies the impacts of environmental change on nutrient cycling, food webs, and biological communities in lakes. This grant furthers his research by helping to answer questions about what happens to living organisms under the ice and how the seasons are connected across the full annual cycle. According to Ozersky, this grant will unlock answers about diverse lakes during their ice cover period. It seeks to answer questions about the physical, chemical, and biological functioning of seasonally freezing lakes across North America. 

The funding is from the National Science Foundations Division of Environmental Biology (DEB Ecosystems), and Ozersky is collaborating with four co-principal Investigators from UC Davis, UW Madison, Carnegie Institute for Science, and Michigan Tech. The total funding amount is $2.4M, of which just over $1,000,000 is coming to UMD.

Inset photo: Ted Ozersky
Above: Kiril Shchapov, a student working on his Ph.D., and Ted Ozersky