On this date in 1941: The second application of rotenone on Third Sister Lake

Time was that the humane treatment of animals didn't really extend to fish. As part of a bit of background reading to assess the possibility of conducting an updated fish survey of Third Sister Lake, I found only one article on the topic of fish in this lake, and it was published in 1942.

The very first sentence of the introduction reads:

The complete removal of fish from Third Sister Lake was not carried out for the primary purpose of making a fish population analysis but rather as part of a general investigation on the existing relationship between the fish and fish-food organisms in this lake.

The author continues by clinically describing the process:

The destruction of the fish population was accomplished by means of rotenone (Derris root) which was supplemented by netting-and angling during the 3 weeks previous to poisoning. The actual poisoning process and its effect on the fish and other organisms found in the lakes described by the authors elsewhere in this volume.

The first poisoning operation was carried out on May 6, 1941, before the spawning season and before the aquatic vegetation was extensive enough to hamper the recovery of fish ... Because the first poisoning did not kill all the fish, a second application was made on August 18 and 19 when water temperatures were more favorable. Only a very few adult fish were recovered along with many thousand bluegill and pumpkinseed fry. These were not included in the population total. After that time, however no fish were seen in the lake until June, 1942,when a few long-eared sunfish entered the lake, presumably via the outlet during high water. We believe that the poisoning was 100 per cent effective in the removal of fish in August.

In other words, they poisoned the lake and then collected the fish that floated up to the surface. The first time wasn't good enough to clear the lake, and so they did another application, but didn't include those fish in the survey. Oh, and by the way, no fish were seen until the summer of the following year; likely up-migration from the connecting stream.

We are relatively concerned about the presence of 1,4 dioxane in the groundwater, and the spills and their infiltration into the groundwater is cause for concern throughout the area affected, but it is worth noting that the wonderfully lovely looking Third Sister Lake was - at one point - the site for the deliberate complete and utter destruction of all fish (and all invertebrates, as well) in the lake. Of course, unlike 1,4 dioxane which is a very persistent molecule, rotenone loses almost all of its toxicity within one week.

Still, considering that the methodology is one that we wouldn't think of using today when conducting fish surveys, the 1941 survey did a few things, such as provide a good estimate of total fish biomass in Third Sister Lake as well as providing a date certain from when there were absolutely no fish in the lake.

BTW, rotenone continues to be used for fish collection and as a measure of last resort for fish management. Happily, though, rotenone won't be use in Third Sister Lake at any time soon.

Brief description of Third Sister Lake

Although there have been many studies in Third Sister Lake, although I provided an initial description of Third Sister Lake, and although there have been descriptions of the history of the forest, little on this site has included much discussion of the history of the lake and of the inputs to the lake.

The following is taken from Hammer & Stoermer (1997), and any use of the following description in any publication must provide proper citation of their paper:

Third Sister Lake (42�17' N., 83�48' W.) is located approximately three miles west of Ann Arbor in the Saginaw Forest of Scio Township, Michigan (Figure 1). This small kettle lake likely formed during the retreat of the Wisconsin glacier, which created a terminal moraine in southern Michigan (Reed, 1902). Mature conifer plantations and hardwood stands of Saginaw Forest shelter Third Sister Lake. Although the lake stratifies in the summer, spring mixing does not occur every year (Lehman & Naumoski, 1986). The present maximum depth is 17.0 m, and the surface area about 3.8 ha. A small intermittent stream enters the lake on the south shore and a single outflow on the southwest shore drains through a small marsh (Figure 1) to the Huron River.

Although Saginaw Forest surrounds Third Sister Lake on a 32 ha tract, significant construction has occurred in the watershed since the 1960s. Agricultural activities originally occupied the entire area east of Saginaw Forest. Currently, this adjacent property is subdivided into several small plots (Wojcik, 1993, personal communication) where industrial and commercial construction has occurred from 1963 to the present (Figure 1). Contamination of Third Sister Lake and local groundwater with 1,4-dioxane was revealed in the 1980s following leakage from an unlined, oxidation lagoon on Gelman Sciences, Inc. property bordering the lake (Brode&Minning, 1988). The most recent project in the adjacent lot, initiated in 1987, included retention pond construction with an outflow that transports stormwater from this nearby property into the inflow stream bed in Saginaw Forest. Ultimately this stormwater reaches Third Sister Lake 300 m downstream. Although erosion barriers were erected in the stream bed on university property, these barriers have since been undercut and subverted by stream flow, creating a gully with steep banks of unconsolidated soil. (Hammer & Stoermer, 1997, pp. 438-439)

Bibliography:

• Hammer, Brian K.; Stoermer, Eugene F.; (1997). "Diatom-based interpretation of sediment banding in an urbanized lake." Journal of Paleolimnology 17 (4): 437-449. http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/43079

A 1961 description of the plantings

Doing a search for "Saginaw Forest" on the University of Michigan Library's DeepBlue server came up with several university documents about the property, including this one from 1961 that discusses the history and the plantings in the property:

A Guide to Saginaw Forest (1961)

A pdf is available for public download at that site. The document also contains a map of the three near-Ann Arbor properties managed by SNRE (Saginaw Forest, Newcomb Tract, and Stinchfield Woods) as well as an original plantings map of Saginaw Forest.

Short history of the founding of Saginaw Forest

Today, Prof. Emeritus Chuck Olson gave me a short history of Saginaw Forest's founding. He has been kind enough to allow me to publish the whole thing here.

Text of a Short Presentation to the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor
on October 29, 1997 by Charles E. Olson, Jr.

This story, like many concerning the University of Michigan, has many beginnings. None, by itself, could yield the whole story. Rather, it is the coming together of several trails which results in something of note.

We pick up one trail when an immigrant German physician, who first settled near Chillicothe, Ohio, saw the light and moved to Ann Arbor in 1860. Although a practicing physician, his real love was geology, and he served as Michigan's State Geologist from 1870 to 1885. Our physician was also a land owner, with properties in at least three townships in Washtenaw County. One of these properties, the W1/2 of the SE1/4 of Sec. 26, T2S, R5E, totaling 80 acres more or less, was purchased on a land contract in 1878, and continued to be farmed by tenant farmers.

The focus of the second trail is a native of Michigan who earned his Civil Engineering degree from the University of Michigan in 1865, headed west and spent a year as a railroad surveyor in Minnesota, after which he returned to his father's lumber business as a "land looker." He prospered in this business and became one of the "lumber barons" who figured prominently in the development of Saginaw, serving as its Mayor for three terms. In 1889, he was one of two appointees to the State Board of Forestry Commissioners.

The third trail relates to another German immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1871, at the age of 13, spent several years in Wisconsin, and then lived the life of a pioneer from Montana to Texas from 1874 to 1882, before returning to Wisconsin to teach school. In 1885 he came to Ann Arbor where he enrolled in the University of Michigan as a freshman, and received his Bachelor of Science degree (in general science) in 1890. He wrote extensively on the forests of Wisconsin and joined the Forestry Division of the General Land Office in 1892, becoming its Chief in 1901.

[At this point, it may be worthwhile to point out that the famous Peshtigo Fire that killed more than 1,500 persons in Wisconsin, the Michigan Fires that burned over 2,500,000 acres, all occurred on the same three days as the "great Chicago Fire" in October 1871. Michigan also experienced catastrophic fire in the Thumb Area in 1881, and the relief effort included the first such activity by the newly formed American Red Cross. Following these catastrophic forest fires, the first University-level course on Forestry was taught at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Political Science.]

How do our three trails converge?

In 1901, our timber baron and Mayor from Saginaw - one Arthur Hill - was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. To strengthen the University's fledgling forestry program, the Board of Regents induced Filibert Roth to leave the Forestry Division of the GLO and come to Michigan in 1903. To provide a place at which forestry could be practiced and demonstrated, Regent Hill approached our physician/geologist, Carl Ludwig Rominger - more commonly known as Charles Rominger - and arranged to purchase a parcel of land - the W1/2 of the SE1/4 of Sec. 26, T2S, R5E, totaling 80 acres more or less - from him. The purchase was completed on December 23, 1903, with the proviso that the tenant farmer could harvest his winter crops the following spring.

Regent Hill offered the parcel to the University and the gift was accepted on January 14, 1904. The deed specified that the property was

"...To be used by the Forestry Department to determine which species of Trees could be used to reforest the worn out farm lands of Michigan."

The deed further specified that the property should be known as The Saginaw Forestry Farm, a title that was subsequently shortened to simply, Saginaw Forest.

The first plantings were made by Forestry students, beginning with a stand of white pine near the northeast corner of the property, planted in the spring of 1904. To reach the property, students took the street car out Jackson Avenue to what is now Stadium Boulevard and then walked the remaining mile-and-a-half to the property, carrying their tools. As evening approached, the students walked back to the end of the line and took the street car back to campus.

Altogether, some 40 species of trees were planted, of which 28 are not native to this part of Michigan, and ten are not native to the United Stated. Professor Roth took such a keen interest in these plantings that he was sometimes observed tending and watering the trees by hand.

The last plantings at Saginaw Forest were completed in 1937, but in the 1960s a natural hybrid birch was discovered near the shore of Third Sister Lake. The hybrid has now been propagated elsewhere and has been named the Murray Birch, after Frank Murray, another "land looker" who was brought to the University in 1935 and served as Properties manager for the School of Forestry & Conservation, the School of Natural Resources, and the School of Natural Resources & Environment. Frank was also a Registered Surveyor and my surveying instructor during my sophomore year at Michigan.

A small stone building was erected near the lake in 1915, as a place to store tools. A well was added to provide water, and the cabin [was] subsequently wired for electricity. This led to other improvements which made it possible for a caretaker, usually a married student, to live on the property. To my knowledge, this is the only University-owned residence which has a "path" rather than an indoor toilet.

The property is presently used as a teaching laboratory in Forest Ecology, Forest Soils and Hydrology, and other courses. There is no other site within 50 miles of Ann Arbor, on either public or private land, which offers a similar diversity of aquatic, wetland and upland ecosystems. This 80-acre tract provides examples of several glacial features, including a portion of the Ft. Wayne end-moraine, a small kame, a kettle lake, and an extensive area of glacial till which once supported a beech-sugar maple forest. No other remnants of the beech-maple forest once found on thousands of acres of this large moraine remain in public ownership except at 20-acre tract owned by the Plymouth, Michigan school system. Thus, Saginaw Forest is one of the last semi-natural tracts remaining on this extensive land form. Successional processes are underway which will, without human action, result in a forest resembling the forests which stood here 300 years ago. This property is on the way to becoming a small urban wilderness of tomorrow.

Spring frog survey done

Frog man, Prof. K. Berven, finished up the spring frog survey last night. This is - not unexpectedly, considering how much warmer this year has been - not surprising, though. However, compared to previous years, the spring 2012 survey seems (at least to me) to have started earlier (I first saw him on March 11, 2012) and lasted for a shorter time than in previous years (which have mentions of his surveys starting between March 13 and March 30 and lasting a few weeks).

Already the sounds of frogs at night has diminished from a deafening cacophony to merely a loud chorus. It seems that this is another price to pay for an inclemently warm March.

Saginaw Forest research

I'm updating the list from August 19, 2010, since I came across another reference, this one to a soil survey conducted in 1964. It's interesting how Google searches are picking up more and more references to studies that have taken place out here. In this case, I think that the Google search turned up the book due to the collaboration that the University of Michigan has with Google - part of the Google Books scanning initiative that's been going on for several years now.

(Remember, too, that there have been several studies on Third Sister Lake.)

SAGINAW FOREST REFERENCES
In chronological order
note: this list is not necessarily exhaustive
compiled by S. Lacy (March 2012)

• Arnold, JD (1935) �A comparative study of certain species of Marasmius and Collybia in culture� Mycologia 27(4): 388-417
• Smith, AH (1935) �Studies in the genus Mycenia. I.� American Journal of Botany 22(10): 858-877
• Blair, WF (1937) �The Burrows and food of the prairie pocket mouse� Journal of Mammalogy, 18(2): 188-191
• Yeager, LE (1937) �Cone-piling by Michigan red squirrels� Journal of Mammalogy, 18(2), 191-194
• Hann, HW (1939) �The relation of castration to migration in birds� Bird-Banding 10(3): 122-124
• Misch, MS (1960) �Heat Regulation in the Northern Blue Jay, Cyanocitta Cristata Bromia Oberholser� Physiological Zoology 33(4): 252-259
• Ladrach, WE (1964) A Soil Survey of Saginaw Forest, M.For. thesis, University of Michigan, 116pp.
• Kistler, S, AG Stephenson and WS Benninghoff (1979) �Description of understory development in a tree plantation with a new method of data structuring� Vegetatio 40(3): 185-191
• Barnes, BV and BC Dancik (1985) "Characteristics and origin of a new birch species, Betula murrayana, from southeastern Michigan" Canadian Journal of Botany 63(2): 223-226
• Howard, RD and AG Kluge (1985) �Proximate mechanisms of sexual selection in wood frogs� Evolution 39(2): 260-277
• Olson, CE, Jr and Z Zhu (1985) �Forest species identification with high spectral resolution data� JPL Proceedings of the Airborne Imaging Spectrometer Data Analysis Workshop. Pages 152-157 (SEE N86-11618 02-43); United States
• Cornell, TJ, KA Berven, and GJ Gamboa (1989) �Kin recognition by tadpoles and froglets of the wood frog Rana sylvatica� Oecologia 78: 312-316
• Riha, VF and KA Berven (1991) �An analysis of latitudinal variation in the larval development of the wood frog (Rana sylvatica)� Copeia 1991(1): 209-221
• Berven, KA and RS Boltz (2001) �Interactive effects of leech (Desserobdella picta) infection on wood frog (Rana sylvatica) tadpole fitness traits� Copeia 2001(4): 907-91
• Kahan, A (2008) Nitrogen and Carbon Biogeochemistry in Soil and Vegetation Along an Indirect Urban-Rural Gradient in Southeastern Michigan. M.S. thesis, University of Michigan.
• Berven, KA (2009) �Density dependence in the terrestrial stage of wood frogs: Evidence from a 21-year population study� Copeia 2009(2): 328-338

Entries from Kurt Byers

I received an e-mail from Kurt Byers, the Saginaw Forest caretaker during the summers of 1984 and 1985, together with some photos that he took. This was a really heart-warming thing to see, especially after waking up to 7F (-14C) temperatures this morning. Parts of the e-mail are posted below. As well, I have updated the entries that Kurt had written in his journal from his tenure.

Ah, memories. I noticed the blurb about your UM SNRE Saginaw Forest caretaker blog http://saginawforest.blogspot.com/ in the Fall 2010 issue of "Stewards." I was the caretaker at Saginaw Forest the summers of 1984 (between my junior and senior years at SNR) and 1985, after I graduated that spring as a 33-year-old "returning adult student" with a BS in Natural Resources and concentration in the now-defunct Environmental Communication program.


I was the sole student in that program when SNR shut it down in 1985 and released my academic advisor, Rich Block, due to a budget crisis (and perhaps low enrollment in the concentration and a concurrent general move by SNR to phase out its undergraduate programs). But I'm happy to say that academic program launched me on what is now a satisfying 25-year career in environmental communication with the NOAA Sea Grant College Program, starting with Michigan Sea Grant at UM my final semester at SNR, and for the past 22 years with Alaska Sea Grant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Sea Grant bio: http://seagrant.uaf.edu/staff/byers.html


My two summers as caretaker at Saginaw Forest were peaceful and uneventful. There was no caretaker journal then, as far as I know. I did, however, keep a personal journal. Spurred by the blurb in Stewards, I dug up my journal from that time to see what, if anything, I wrote about my stints at Saginaw Forest. (Not much)


I do recall splitting a huge pile of firewood, mowing the lawn, doing check-walks around the lake, wondering about toxins in the lake from the Gelman micro filter company, and sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the loft. And, somehow, in 1985, I lost my bowling ball out of a small U-Haul trailer I rented when I moved my stuff from my married housing apartment (although I was not married then) by the Medical Center (roach-infested apartments now torn down) to Saginaw Forest.


The most memorable event was when I lost my 12-foot aluminum john boat, when it somehow got loose and floated away in 1985. Then working part-time for Michigan Sea Grant as an editorial assistant, I had recently edited the Master's thesis of Sea Grant-funded UM grad student, Karl Huggins. His thesis described his invention of the Orca EDGE (Electronic Dive Guide) dive computer, which gained him everlasting fame in the scuba diving world.


Assuming my boat had sunk in the deep, cold lake, I easily persuaded Karl to do a search-and-recovery dive to try to find it. Karl and his dive buddy (photos attached) treated it like a training dive, spending a weekend afternoon scuba diving in the lake looking for my boat. No luck. Later, when the lake froze over and the cattails died, I found my boat frozen in the ice deep in the cattails, a place inaccessible to search without a boat in the summer. I tried to hack it out of the ice with an axe. I don't remember if I succeeded or if I had to wait to recover the boat later in the year when the ice thawed.


In any case, I was amazed to read the log entry from January 3, 1986, by caretaker R. Boyle, wherein he noted his discovery of what he speculated to be my boat! I don't recall anyone notifying me of his find and I don't recall knowing R. Boyle. Maybe both of us found it at different times that winter. Epilogue: A quarter century later, the boat is still around, now possessed by my brother-in-law in Grand Rapids!


My then girlfriend and later-to-be-wife, the late Poksyn Yoon (deceased 2008), was a post doc biochemist at UM and lived down Liberty Road about a mile or two from the Saginaw Forest gate. During the summer of 1985 I worked two jobs-two days a week for Michigan Sea Grant on North Campus, and three days a week for a residential accessory (room additions, carports, etc.--that's the company's Ford pickup in the attached photos) company in Livonia. On her way to campus, Poksyn would often leave a lunch for me in a small Igloo cooler on the gate to the Saginaw Forest driveway, and I'd grab it when I left for work in the morning. One morning someone absconded with it, and that was the end of that little ritual.

Karl Huggins: setting up for scuba search

Dr. Poksyn Yoon

"Wookie"

Kurt in front of the cabin.

Turtles!

It's amazing to me how much everything is still the same, and amazing how much has changed. For example, the rusted hitch-and-wheels is still on the property, rusting away. The cedar next to the cabin has grown significantly taller and shades the cabin a lot more than in 1985, and I don't recall ever seeing so many turtles in the lake. Too, the woodpiles are quite impressive. I have to admit that, with a gas furnace (perhaps installed since 1985?), I don't chop too much wood (and don't use most of the wood that I chop, either).

I would very much like to thank Kurt for sharing his memories of his time in the cabin in the woods, and encourage any other readers to feel free to send me their own recollections or photographs of times past in Saginaw Forest.