A research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Science Center in Middleton, will be the first speaker in a spring series of colloquium forums, focusing on the timely issue of climate change. The series is sponsored by the College of Natural Resources (CNR) and the College of Letters and Sciences Biology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The first colloquium will be held Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 4 p.m. in CNR Room 170, and features Dale M. Robertson. His talk, "Ice Covers acting as Climatic Indicators," examines the long-term changes and interannual variability of Lake Mendota in Dane County and other lakes in the Northern Hemisphere regarding ice covers as a climactic indicator. According to Robertson, much of the climatic change and variability in ice covers is due to events in El Nino, a warming of the ocean surface off the western coast of South America, occurring every few years.

Robertson received his master�s and doctorate from Madison in oceanography and limnology. Following his doctorate, he was a research fellow at the University of Western Australia. Currently his research focuses on modeling eutrophication and mixing in lakes, developing nutrient criteria for streams, examining the effects of climate change on lakes and estimating loads and concentrations in streams over large geographic areas.

Other colloquium speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.