xix, 310 pages : 29 cm

"Lake Michigan and the other four Great Lakes of North America collectively constitute the largest body of fresh water in the world, measured by surface area. The eminent limnologist Clifford H. Mortimer has spent much of his life studying these lakes, the dynamics of their waters, and the impact of humans upon them. Lake Michigan in Motion, offering an introduction to the science, public policy, and history of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes system, is certain to become a classic reference book."

"Mortimer chronicles three centuries of inquiry into Lake Michigan from the Native Americans, who called it Michigani (Great Waters), to the French explorers, whose first recorded observations date from the 1600s, to present-day scientists, who use satellite views of the Great Lakes from outer space." "Lake Michigan in Motion is a source of information for amateur naturalists, students, teachers, public officials, a wide variety of scientists and natural resource managers, residents of Lake Michigan's shores, and others who use the lake for their livelihood and recreation."--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-294) and indexes

THREE CENTURIES OF PHYSICAL INQUIRY: Voyageurs and missionaries (1610-1700) -- Trade and wars (1700-1820) -- The Cass Expedition {1820) -- Canals, ships, wrecks, charts (1825 to the present) -- Beginnings of government investigations of fisheries: early academic initiatives (1870-1900) -- U.S. Department of the Interior, Great Lakes fishery investigations (1925-1940) -- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Anti-Lamprey Campaign (1940 and continuing) -- Expansion of research at the Universities of Michigan and Toronto; initiation of the Great Lakes Research Conferences (1953 and continuing) -- Government agencies, and commissions concerned with lake research and management -- Expansion of Great Lakes research during the 1960s and beyond -- Establishment of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL, 1974) -- THE LAKE BASIN: EXCAVATED BY ICE, SHAPED BY SHORE EROSION AND SEDIMENT TRANSPORT: Birth of the basin -- Chronology and regional variation of crustal rebound -- Form and dimensions of today’s basin -- Shore types and their erosion -- Shifting sediments: (I) on the beaches -- Shifting sediments: (II) migration offshore; episodic re-suspension by storm waves -- Particles suspended in offshore water columns -- The burial ground for recent sediments located, not at maximum depth, but along the eastern slope of the southern basin -- Water transparency. WATER LEVELS AND FLOWS: Long-term changes in the water level -- Michigan-Huron water levels before 1860, corrected for postglacial land rebound -- The St. Clair River outflow from Michigan-Huron -- The diversions -- Water exchanges between the Michigan and Huron basins -- How long, on average, is a "conservative" pollutant retained in Lake Michigan? -- Lake water as a resource -- THE SEASONAL CYCLES OF HEATING/COOLING AND LAYERING/MIXING: Winter cooling -- Spring warm-up and development of nearshore thermal fronts -- Wind-induced perturbations of spring thermal fronts and summer thermoclines -- Summer 1942 correlation between: (I) P.E. Church's temperature transects; (II) lake water intake temperatures; and (III) wind -- Annual heat budgets and related meteorological variables -- Autumnal cooling -- The influence of human activities on the lake's thermal regime, now and in the future -- The lake as a possible renewable energy source -- PARADE OF LAKE CURRENTS: Current-wind comparisons at differing distances from shore and in different seasons -- Turbulent flow and formation of the upper mixed layer -- Consequences of earth-spin for currents as seen by earthbound observers -- Inertial current responses to impulsive and unsteady wind -- Upper layer response to relatively steady wind (Ekman drift) -- Geostrophically balanced currents -- Vertical transports -- Whole-basin and partial-basin circulation patterns, including contributions from long waves

CATEGORIES AND MODELS OF WAVES: What is a wave? -- Radiation of energy by wave groups moving out from areas of wave generation -- The climate of short surface waves on the lake -- Short progressive internal waves and stability oscillations -- Rotation-affected long waves in model channels and basins of uniform depth -- Nomenclature of rotation-affected waves -- Wave reflection at shore barriers - models of standing waves and seiches in rectangular channels and basins -- Combination of two oppositely propagating Kelvin waves -- Sverdrup waves combined to form Poincare waves in rotating rectangular model channels -- Sverdrup and Poincare wave theory -- Vorticity waves (topographic Rossby waves) in basins of non-uniform depth -- Forced oscillation and resonance -- Nonlinear internal wave responses to strong forcing -- LONG SURFACE WAVES: SEICHES, TIDES, AND STORM SURGES: History of observations of low-frequency fluctuations in lake surface level (seiches) -- Spectral analysis of water level records - the method -- Spectral analysis of water level records - results for longitudinal seiches -- The semidiurnal lunar tide -- The crossbasin seiche -- Forced oscillation and resonances in Green Bay -- The Michigan-Huron co-oscillation -- Storm surges -- Whole-basin structure of main-basin and Green Bay seiche modes. PROBING THE UNDERWATER WAVE FIELD: Signals from internal waves arriving at municipal lake water intakes -- The 1963 campaign: a calm start -- The 1963 campaign continued: a short burst of wind starts near-inertial oscillation -- The 1963 campaign continued: dramatic perturbations of thermocline topography during and after storms -- An internal response of stratified Green Bay to near-periodic wind forcing -- Complications facing the interpreter of fixed-point current and temperature records -- The 1963 findings and avenues for future research -- MODELS IN ACTION: Storm surges -- Surface wave predictions -- The amphidromic surface seiche modes -- The double resonance in Green Bay -- Poincare wave models: propogation restriction in rectangular channels -- Further model combinations compared with poststorm lake responses -- Adjustment after downwelling -- The way ahead -- HYDRODYNAMIC CONSTRAINTS ON BIOLOGICAL PRODUCTION AND HUMAN AFFAIRS: The water/sediment column: a stage for biological play -- Localized light and nutrient control of spring production at nearshore thermal fronts -- Control exerted by oxygen fluxes -- The nature and consequences of the lake's interactions with humankind -- Public health -- Introduction of alien species -- The history of loading to the lake of phosphorus, toxic contaminants, and chloride -- Annual coupled cycles of sediment/water exchange of phosphorus, water column dynamics, and biological production -- Aquatic science and public policy - the lake in court, a cause celebre -- The contribution of scientists to the lake's future environmental well-being

THREE CENTURIES OF PHYSICAL INQUIRY: Voyageurs and missionaries (1610-1700) -- Trade and wars (1700-1820) -- The Cass Expedition {1820) -- Canals, ships, wrecks, charts (1825 to the present) -- Beginnings of government investigations of fisheries: early academic initiatives (1870-1900) -- U.S. Department of the Interior, Great Lakes fishery investigations (1925-1940) -- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Anti-Lamprey Campaign (1940 and continuing) -- Expansion of research at the Universities of Michigan and Toronto; initiation of the Great Lakes Research Conferences (1953 and continuing) -- Government agencies, and commissions concerned with lake research and management -- Expansion of Great Lakes research during the 1960s and beyond -- Establishment of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL, 1974) -- THE LAKE BASIN: EXCAVATED BY ICE, SHAPED BY SHORE EROSION AND SEDIMENT TRANSPORT: Birth of the basin -- Chronology and regional variation of crustal rebound -- Form and dimensions of today’s basin -- Shore types and their erosion -- Shifting sediments: (I) on the beaches -- Shifting sediments: (II) migration offshore; episodic re-suspension by storm waves -- Particles suspended in offshore water columns -- The burial ground for recent sediments located, not at maximum depth, but along the eastern slope of the southern basin -- Water transparency. WATER LEVELS AND FLOWS: Long-term changes in the water level -- Michigan-Huron water levels before 1860, corrected for postglacial land rebound -- The St. Clair River outflow from Michigan-Huron -- The diversions -- Water exchanges between the Michigan and Huron basins -- How long, on average, is a "conservative" pollutant retained in Lake Michigan? -- Lake water as a resource -- THE SEASONAL CYCLES OF HEATING/COOLING AND LAYERING/MIXING: Winter cooling -- Spring warm-up and development of nearshore thermal fronts -- Wind-induced perturbations of spring thermal fronts and summer thermoclines -- Summer 1942 correlation between: (I) P.E. Church's temperature transects; (II) lake water intake temperatures; and (III) wind -- Annual heat budgets and related meteorological variables -- Autumnal cooling -- The influence of human activities on the lake's thermal regime, now and in the future -- The lake as a possible renewable energy source -- PARADE OF LAKE CURRENTS: Current-wind comparisons at differing distances from shore and in different seasons -- Turbulent flow and formation of the upper mixed layer -- Consequences of earth-spin for currents as seen by earthbound observers -- Inertial current responses to impulsive and unsteady wind -- Upper layer response to relatively steady wind (Ekman drift) -- Geostrophically balanced currents -- Vertical transports -- Whole-basin and partial-basin circulation patterns, including contributions from long waves

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