Geology topics

Research about Devil's Lake

Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Devil's Lake.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS1995

Simulation of stage and the the hydrologic budget of Devils Lake, Sauk County, Wisconsin

Water clarity of Devils Lake, in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, has been decreasing because of blue-green algal blooms. An understanding of the hydrology of Devils Lake is needed to develop a mitigation plan to reduce phosphorus input. A model was developed to test the current understanding of the hydrology of the lake including stage and hydrologic budget and to estimate the effects of proposed mitigation plans on lake stage. Daily lake stage was simulated in the model by summing estimates of hydrologic-budget components. The Devils Lake hydrologic-budget components are precipitation on the lake surface, evaporation from the lake surface, runoff (consisting of overland flow to the lake and an intermittent stream flowing into the lake), and ground-water flow into and out of the lake. The model was calibrated to measured lake stage for the period 1980-92. Simulated stage compares reasonably well with historical stage data for Devils Lake. The root mean square of the differences of simulated and measured daily lake stages for the period 1980-92 is 0.83 foot. Simulated lake stage is very sensitive to small changes in runoff and evaporation coefficients, and ground-waterflow rates used in the model. The average model-calculated annual amounts of each hydrologic-budget component for the 1980-92 simulation period, in order of increasing volume, are evaporation (791 acre-feet), precipitation (973 acre-feet), runoff (1,107 acre-feet), and net ground-water flow, which is out of the lake (1,323 acre-feet). Three mitigation plans were simulated. Mitigation plan 3, which includes the addition of water from a basin adjacent to the northeastern side of the Devils Lake Basin, allows for withdrawals of hypolimnetic water and maintaining lake stage closer to optimal levels than would result without mitigation.

Wisconsin↗

USGS1994

Bottom-sediment chemistry in Devil's Lake, northeast North Dakota

Devils Lake is a 200 km 2 terminal lake that contains sodium sulfate type water. Dissolved solids concentrations range from about 3,500 mg/L to 10,000 mg/L depending on location To investigate geochemical processes in the bottom sediments of Devils Lake, sediment cores were collected at two sites in the western half of the lake during a period of bottom water oxygen depletion. The upper 10 cm of the sediments consist of about 60 weight percent silicates (quartz, feldspar, and clays) 35 weight percent carbonates and 5 weight percent organic material. At depths between 1 and 3 cm in the sediments bacterial sulfate reduction and associated degradation of organic material cause minima in sulfate concentrations and δ 13 C values of dissolved inorganic carbon and maxima in alkalinity, ammonia, phosphate, and sulfide concentrations and δ 34 S values of dissolved sulfate. Downward increases of sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium concentrations result from upward diffusion of ions from saline pore water and dissolving sulfate minerals below 30 cm depth in the sediments. High magnesium calcite 8 mole percent MgCO 3 is the most abundant carbonate at the sediment surface. With increasing depth abundances of high magnesium carbonate decrease and abundances of low magnesium calcite aragonite and dolomite increase. Carbon isotope compositions of bulk carbonates range from δ 13 C = -0.7 to +0.5%. These values are close to equilibrium with dissolved inorganic carbon in lake water ( δ 13 C = -2%) but far from equilibrium with dissolved inorganic carbon in pore water ( δ 13 C = -16.3- -10/0%). Disequilibrium between pore water and carbonates suggests that the carbonates did not recrystallize substantially in the presence of pore water. Therefore the change of carbonate mineral proportions with depth in the sediments is due mainly to temporal changes in the proportions of endogenic, detrital, and biologic carbonates that were deposited on the lake bottom rather than postdepositional carbonate diagenesis.

North Dakota↗

USGS1988

A survey of the prevalence of selected bacteria in wild birds

We determined the prevalence of six genera of bacteria from a sample of 387 cloacal swabs from 364 passerines and woodpeckers. The prevalence of bacteria were as follows: Escherichia coli (1%), Pseudomonas spp. (22%), Salmonella spp. (0%), Staphylococcus spp. (15%), Streptococcus spp. (18%), and Yersinia spp. (1%). The prevalence of Streptococcus spp. was higher in omnivorous species than in granivorous species (20% versus 8%). Individuals captured at feeders had a lower prevalence of both Streptococcus spp. (15% versus 33%) and Escherichia coli (0.5% versus 4%) than birds that did not have access to feeders. These differences are probably not due to the feeder per se, but instead to other site related differences. The prevalence of bacteria did not differ between male and female black-capped chickadees, Parus atricapillus . For 279 color marked black-capped chickadees, we calculated the cumulative mortality rate during 12 wk following swabbing. Although the cumulative mortality rates of infected birds were consistently higher than the rates of non-infected birds, none of these differences were significant. Infections may cause slight reductions in survival rates, but we were not able to confirm this with our data.

Wisconsin↗