Mountain Lakes Poor In Nutrients

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 15

Mountain Lakes Poor In Nutrients

Fifteen Canterbury mountain lakes and their comparatively poor supply of chemical nutrients will be described to the International Congress of Limnology in Israel this month by Dr V. M. Stout, a senior lecturer in zoology at the University

of Canterbuiy. She will also describe the “artificial fertilisers” necessary if New Zealand wants to encourage plant, animal, and fish growth in the lakes. Limnology covers freshwater lakes, rivers and streams.

Dr Stout said that the Canterbury mountain lakes reflected their “youth” after comparatively recent glaciation and the slow flow of chemicals from hard rock. There had not yet been time for fish food, for instance, to build up. The congress at the Hebrew University at Jerusalem would include pollution, fish production, and tropical lakes, all in relation to economic effects. Israel did much fishpond production and tropica] lakes had scarcely been exploited. Dr Stout will visit universities, including Oxford, Reading, and Michigan, to discuss “production ecology,” a new course she will start next term in Canterbury for the study of both terrestrial and aquatic growth.

Dr Stout will also publicise everywhere the New Zealand • Limnology Society, formed at - the recent A.N.Z.A.A.S. conI gress in Christchurch. It has . 50 members. Dr Stout’s trip Is being - supported by an Erskine fund ■ grant in aid from the University of Canterbury.