Crystal Lake (Vilas County, Wisconsin)

Crystal Lake is a kettle hole lake, meaning it was formed from glacial movement and melting and it's located in Vilas County, Wisconsin. Many kettle lakes are sealed by glacial till and have perched water tables, but Crystal Lake does not. It is not surprising that Crystal lake is a seepage lake considering most lakes in Wisconsin are also seepage lakes. Since this lake is a seepage lake, it doesn't receive water from an inlet or an outlet, 90% of its water is from precipitation, less than 5% of the water is from the groundwater supply, and it doesn't receive a lot of runoff water because of the pine trees surrounding the lake, the permeable soil surrounding the lake, and the lack of large differences in elevation. meaning that the water in the lake mixes twice a year and is stratified in between mixing periods. == Ecology ==

In 1994, Leptodiaptomus minutus, a copepod species, commonly carried the peritrich ciliate Epistylis lacustris; 70% of copepods in 1994 carried at least one ciliate. The chlorophyll α concentrations of the lakes changed in the same ways and amounts to different climate patterns and the results supported that climate oscillation and chlorophyll α concentrations are synchronized. This study found that the chlorophyll α concentrations in seepage lakes, like Crystal Lake, tend to depend more on climate than other types of lakes, since their main water source is precipitation. They also observed that algae growth is somewhat affected by climate, but there are of course other factors that contribute to it. == Plant life ==

Despite being oligotrophic, there are nine different plant species in Crystal Lake. In many oligotrophic lakes, nutrients from the atmosphere may affect the phytoplankton in the lake and their productivity. As mentioned in the Ecology section, there are also a lot of pine trees surrounding the lake. == Geology and soil content ==

There are many small, soft water lakes in the area around Crystal Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin and it is a possibility that these lakes used to be one big lake which was formed from a glacier. This means that sediments from the pelagic zone in Crystal Lake were sampled, lead, or Pb, was taken from these samples and carbon dated to show its age which was used to determine how much sediment containing lead was deposited each year. 10,000 μg m−2 a−1 of Pb were recorded in atmospheric fluxes and PAHs had atmospheric fluxes of 34 μg m−2 a−1. ==References==