Today our team learned about two various topics this morning in discussion based lecturing: mining runoff into lakes near the iron range northwest of Duluth and Holocene climate change. The former was used to show an inverse correlation between sulfate concentration and wild rice; it is shown that since the late 1880s with more hydrogen sulfide going into the surrounding lakes around the tailing pits, wild rice production has slowed down and some areas stopped completely. The second discussion on climate change was specifically directed toward the Holocene in Minnesota. We discussed the last glacial maximum, the impact of mining, and how vegetation can be used to trace the changes over large time scales. After lunch today, we also took some samples from all of our working halves of our cores from sites 1-4 to sieve for plant macrofossils. To finish the day, we had a team dinner with homemade pancakes, syrup, and bacon. Tomorrow we head back to GNBZ for another day of field work; the anticipation is eating away on this Monday night…

Zach Kisfalusi

Subsampling one of our cores for the plant macrofossil analysis.