Biology professor discusses lake temperature and global warming on Academic Minute

David C. Richardson, associate professor of biology at SUNY New Paltz, discussed his research on the warming temperatures of lakes in the northeast U.S. and southeast Canada on the nationally-syndicated radio program, “The Academic Minute,” on Feb. 12.

“As a result of the changing climate, summers are getting longer and winter ice cover is getting shorter,” Richardson said on the Academic Minute broadcast. “Climate change is warming lakes and rapidly modifying the ecological resources that we want and value.”

[To listen to Richardson’s “Academic Minute” in its entirety, please follow this link.]

Richardson’s findings are based on temperature data collected from more than 200 regional lakes. Approximately 90 percent of the surveyed lakes showed warming in surface waters from 1975 to 2014.

Richardson was one of three lead authors to document this trend in a June 2017 paper titled “Transparency, Geomorphology and Mixing Regime Explain Variability in Trends in Lake Temperature and Stratification across Northeastern North America (1975–2014).”

About “The Academic Minute”
“The Academic Minute” is an educationally focused radio segment produced by WAMC in Albany, N.Y., a National Public Radio member station. The show features an array of faculty from colleges and universities across the country discussing the unique, high-impact aspects of their research. The program airs every weekday and is run multiple times during the day on about 50 different member stations across the National Public Radio spectrum. For more information, visit http://academicminute.org/.