3/22/08
Geoffrey Schladow is an environmental engineer at the University of California, Davis campus and he has made some dire predictions for the famous Lake Tahoe in Northern California. He stated that the water could turn green due to possible algae growth -- most serious of all consequences.
Here are some quotes taken out of the Sacramento Bee article.
"Lakes around the world … are showing extreme stress, particularly in their ability to mix," said Charles Goldman, an internationally recognized lake scientist at UC Davis.
"Last year, we had a warm winter and a hot summer – so Lake Biwa did not mix well," Kumagai said. "That led to the deaths of many ducks from a toxin in the algae. Also, many fish were killed because of low oxygen near the bottom. Last year was terrible."
"This would be a real change of state for the lake," said Robert Coats, a UC Davis research ecologist in the conference audience Tuesday. "It would be the kind of thing people call a tipping point."
The "worst-case scenario," Coats added, would be the release of large volumes of phosphorus, a nutrient that spurs algae growth, now locked in sediment on the lake bottom. "In a very short time, the lake would go from blue to green," he said.
