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Whitney M. Woelmer

Publications and source records attributed to Whitney M. Woelmer.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2026

Seasons and seasonality in lakes: Synthesis amid global change

Seasonality in environmental conditions plays a fundamental role in shaping lake ecosystems. However, patterns of seasonality vary worldwide, and these patterns are shifting over time amid global change. Thus, it is increasingly important to evaluate how seasons and seasonality are represented in lake ecosystem research. Here, we used a literature review and global data analysis to synthesize approaches for conceptualizing seasons and seasonality in lakes. We found that a wide range of criteria are used to delineate discrete seasons in published literature, including fixed dates (e.g., months, solstice/equinox), environmental thresholds (e.g., temperature and precipitation cutoffs), and lake-specific indicators (e.g., ice cover, plankton phenology). Analyzing data from lakes worldwide, we found that using different criteria to define the same season resulted in divergent interpretations of ecosystem states. Based on our synthesis, we offer recommendations for how to incorporate seasonality into lake research and communications amid global change.

Limnology and Oceanography Letters↗
USGS2025

Archive of morphological data for the Coregonus artedi species complex of the Great Lakes, Lake Nipigon and Great Slave Lake

This publication is a user guide for an archive of morphological data recorded by various authors from North American ciscoes of the Coregonus artedi species complex (subfamily Coregoninae ). The archive is accessible from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s (GLFC) server, is open access, and contains data for the Laurentian Great Lakes; Lake Nipigon, Ontario; and Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories. The archive comprises morphometrics and meristics (together metrics) for 6,700 individual Cisco of which 1,400 are accompanied by images. In addition, the archive contains metrics presented as arrays by W. N. Koelz, Coregonid fishes of the Great Lakes, Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries 43(2):297-643, which were based on 10,000 individuals. Spreadsheets in the Metrics folder of the archive are divided broadly into Contemporary and Historical subfolders and the Contemporary subfolder is further divided into Cisco Monograph and Extra Monograph subfolders to encourage statistical assessment of findings in GLFC Miscellaneous Publication 2023. The Images folder is organized into subfolders by lake. Tables in this user guide allow for quick determination of the availability of data by lake, subspecies, author, and year.

Laurentian↗
USGS2023

The NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge

The 21st century continues to be characterized by major changes to the environment and the ecosystem services upon which society depends. Anticipating and responding to these changes requires that scientists explicitly forecast future conditions in real time (Dietze et al . 2018 ). Ecological forecasting, like weather and epidemiological forecasting, involves integrating data and models to generate quantitative predictions of the future state of ecological systems before observations are collected. The iterative cycle of creating forecasts, evaluating them with new observations, updating the models, and then making new forecasts has the potential to accelerate learning across many ecological subdisciplines. This cycle builds on openly available data, often published soon after collection, as is increasingly common in ecological observatory networks, such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). To accelerate improvements in ecological forecasting, we designed and launched the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge (hereafter, “Challenge”) (Figure 1 ), an open platform for the ecological and data science communities to forecast NEON data before they are collected.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗