Lake—Wide Seasonal Changes in Limnological Conditions in Lake Michigan in 1976

Data collected on lake-wide cruises in 1976 were used to study seasonal and vertical variations in water temperature, transparency, chlorophyll a, and nutrients in Lake Michigan. Data were analyzed according to subsets corresponding to the northern and southern open lake. Comparisons (t-tests) of data from the open lake indicated that the average water temperature was cooler and average water transparency was greater in the northern lake than in the southern, but with the exception of total phosphorus, average nutrient concentrations did not differ between the northern and southern parts. It was found that physical-chemical characteristics of nearshore and Straits of Mackinac stations differed significantly from open lake stations. Seasonal phytoplankton dynamics in the open lake were related to seasonal and vertical changes in silica and nitrate nitrogen. The spring phytoplankton bloom occurred before the lake was strongly stratified thermally. After thermal stratification was well developed, epilimnetic concentrations of chlorophyll a decreased, probably due to some combination of nutrient limitation and zooplankton grazing, and maximum chlorophyll a concentrations were found below the thermocline. Epilimnetic silica concentrations decreased after thermal stratification and diatoms were replaced in the phytoplankton assemblage by green and blue-green algae in late summer. Total phosphorus averaged only 8 μg/L on a lake-wide basis and thus only small but significant reductions in absolute concentration can be expected from phosphorus control programs. However, over a period of several years, these small reductions in concentration may be difficult to verify from total phosphorus measurements which have relatively large sampling errors and variances.