Sep 21, 2026 · 14 min · 7 segments
Research across the Great Lakes is helping educators better understand water quality, natural resources and the connection between land and water. Williams County Extension Educator Kayla Wyse joins…
Ryan MatthewsHostAnd we were looking at to see if, okay, when you have water running into a river after a rain event, it's obviously groundwater.
There's a lot of tannins, things like that, and it sticks, stones, animal feces, the whole gambit of things running into the river.
comes out brown, it flows into the lake, stays brown, but if you get into the middle of Lake Superior, it's clear.
So the bottom line question, why is that? Scientists know three different reasons why.
It can either be eaten, eaten by those fish, those phytoplankton, other organisms, it can degrade by the sunlight or it can settle out.
And did you find a result to that or is it still kind of in question? Are you allowed to tell me that?
We were able to do like a huge like breaking down what are the particles that are breaking down.
So what that means is we set bottles of light out on the ship deck for about 48 hours, enough time to give it to degrade.
And we were looking at to see if, okay, when you have water running into a river after a rain event, it's obviously groundwater.
There's a lot of tannins, things like that, and it sticks, stones, animal feces, the whole gambit of things running into the river.
comes out brown, it flows into the lake, stays brown, but if you get into the middle of Lake Superior, it's clear.
So the bottom line question, why is that? Scientists know three different reasons why.
It can either be eaten, eaten by those fish, those phytoplankton, other organisms, it can degrade by the sunlight or it can settle out.
And did you find a result to that or is it still kind of in question? Are you allowed to tell me that?
We were able to do like a huge like breaking down what are the particles that are breaking down.
So what that means is we set bottles of light out on the ship deck for about 48 hours, enough time to give it to degrade.
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