Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 41

SCIENCE C5 HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN SUNDAY, MAY 2008 "Even in spring, summer and fall, this is tough. In the winter, to go out a mile and a half on the ice and break through it to take water samples, in a year-round effort for 60 years, is pretty amazing to me. Every time I think about it I am humbled." Stephanie E. Hampton Of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California-Santa Barbara ii tic 5 iff 2 largest body of fresh water on Earth. Many species, including the world's only exclusively ian lake warais 110 Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest and A family has spent 60 years observing Lake Baikal, leaving fellow scientists in awe By Cornelia Dean New York Times IN 1945, when Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, Mikhail M.

Kozhpv began keeping track of what was happening under the surface of Lake Baikal, the ancient Siberian lake that is the deepest and largest body of fresh water onEarth. Every week to 10 days, by boat In summer and over the ice in winter, he crossed the lake to a spot about a mile and a half from Bolshie Koty, a small village in the piney woods on Baikal's northwest shore. There, Kozhov, a professor at Irkutsk State University, would record water temperature and clarity and track the plant and animal plankton species as deep as 2,400 feet. Soon his daughter Olga M. Kozhova began assisting him and, eventually her daughter, Lyubov Izmesteva, joined the project They kept at it over the years, producing an extraordinary record of the lake and its health.

Now Izmesteva and scientists in the United States have analyzed the data and concluded, to their surprise, that the water in Lake Baikal is rapidly warming. As a result, its highly unusual food web is reorganizing, as warmer water species of plankton become more prevalent. These shifts at the bottom of the food web could have important implications for all of the creatures that live in the lake, they say, Although Kozhov is famous among scientists who study lakes his 1961 book "Lake Baikal and Its Life" is considered a Russ lake Jy Baykal v-' JL RUSSIA fdpm NEW YORK TIMES freshwater seal, reside in its waters. every decade. At a depth of about 75 feet, the increase is about 0.2 degrees per decade, they say, enough to jeopardize species "unable to adapt evolutionary or Over the last 137 years, the researchers say, the ice-free season has lengthened by more than two weeks, primarily because ice forms later in the year.

The database, including data on chlorophyll that the family started collecting in 1979, suggest that the "growing season" for plankton and algae has lengthened in the lake. Chlorophyll levels have tripled since measurement began, the researchers said. Ordinarily, the researchers said in their report, this increased plant growth Would be accompanied by decreases In water clarity, but that Is not what the data show at Lake Baikal. This finding, they said, "highlights the importance of establishing monitoring for 'early warming' before a need for monitoring may be perceived visually." Now, Hampton said, she and other researchers are examining how the Kozhov family's data fit with records of ecological phenomena elsewhere. So far, she said, "the data correlate well." "You could not make up something like this." she added.

Moore said Kozhov died in 1968 and his daughter Olga died in 2000. The family persisted in their work through years of political, economic and social turmoil, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when, Moore said, "funds for the program just dried up." Today, she said, Izmesteva and her colleagues pay for their work in part with fees they earn by consulting or doing environmental Impact assessments. "They sustain the program any way they can," Moore said. tot. basically ignored it." When she returned with another class two years later and another scientist mentioned the data, "my jaw dropped to the floor," she said.

"I realized this is just extraordinary." She got in touch with Hamilton, who is an expert In the analysis of complex ecological field data, particularly the use of statistical techniques to discern real trends in the messy ups and downs of nature. The center in Santa Barbara financed the collaboration, Baikal is a place of unusual biodiversity, with many species found nowhere else. Among them are giant shrimp, bright Pacific Ocean green sponges that grow in shallow water forests and the Baikal seal, the world's only exclusively freshwater seal. In 1996, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, designated the lake a World Heritage Site.

Although it is known that warming is more Intense at high latitudes, as in the Baikal area, and that water is warming in other major lakes, including Lake Tahoe in Nevada and Lake Tanganyika in central Africa, many scientists had thought that Lake Baikal's enormous volume and unusual water circulation patterns would buffer the effects of global warming. Instead, the researchers report, surface waters in Lake Baikal are warming quickly, on average by about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit burns 100 calories a pound of weight daily, researchers say. How the dogs maintain such a high level of caloric burn for an extended period without tapping into their reserves of fat and glycogen (and thus grinding to a halt like the rest of us) is what makes them "magical," Davis says. If Davis and the Texas researchers Identify the biomarker, or "switch," that could help the military understand and develop ways to control and prevent the physiological effects of fatigue in strenuous cases like combat, "Soldiers' duties often require extreme exertion, which causes them to become fatigued," Jan Walker of DARPA wrote in an e-mail message. "Severe fatigue can result In a compromised immune system, making soldiers more susceptible to illness or 0 hv Dogs who classic the new report is "the international debut of the Kozhov family's legacy of research," 1 Stephanie E.

Hampton of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said in an e-mail message. She led the work along with Izmesteva who, like her mother and grandfather before her, is a professor at the university and a 1 researcher at the biological field station it established in Bolshie Koty in 1918. Their findings are being reported this month in the journal Global Change RUSSIA Biology. Like others who have seen the data, Hampton said in an interview that she was in awe of the people who had collected it. "Even in the spring, summer and fall, this is tough," she said.

"In the winter, to go out a mile and a half on the ice and break through it to take water samples, In a year-round effort for 60 years, is pretty amazing to me. Every time I think about It I am humbled." Marianne V. Moore, an ecologist at Wellesley College and another researcher on the project, said she learned about the data in 2001 when she took students in her class, "Baikal and the Soul of Siberia," to the lake. Izmesteva spoke to the group and showed a few slides, which the translator said had been drawn from a 60-year record. "I thought he had made a mistake," Moore recalled.

"So I "They have a hidden strategy that they can turn on," he said. "We are confident that humans have the capacity for that strategy. We have to figure out how dogs are turning it on to turn it on In humans." Researchers have not demonstrated that ability in other species, but Davis said migratory mammals or birds could have it. Nor Is it similar to the mammalian diving reflex that lets aquatic mammals like seals, otters and dolphins stay under water for long periods of time by slowing metabolic rates, "THE LEVEL of metabolism Is staying the same," Davis said. "It's not slowing down their calorie burn rate." In fact, sled dogs In long-distance racing typically burn 240 calories a pound per day for one to two weeks nonstop.

The average Tour de France cyclist Jrkutsk. Bolshie Koty MONGOLIA Yekaterinburg1! china 'Magical' metabolism keeps fatigue-proof sled dogs running Then suddenly they throw a switch we don't know what It is yet that reverses all of that, In a 24-hour period, they go back to the same type of metabolic baseline you see in resting subjects. But It's while they are running 100 miles a day." Davis, who studied the sled dogs, found they did not chew up their reserves, and avoided the worst aspects of fatigue. He is pursuing the research for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which gave him a $1.4 million grant In 2003 to study the physiology of fatigue resistance of sled dogs. Davis, who Is teaming with researchers at Texas in a $300,000 DARPA grant, awarded last fall, has been traveling to Alaska for years to learn why the sled dogs are By Douglas Robson New York Times When humans engage In highly strenuous exercise day after day, they start to metabolize the body's reserves, depleting glycogen and fat stores.

When cells run out of energy, a result is fatigue, and exercise grinds to a halt until those sources are replenished. Dogs are different, in particular the sled dogs that run the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. This is a grueling race, and studies show that the dogs somehow change their metabolism during the race. Dr. Michael S.

Davis, an associate professor of veterinary physiology at Oklahoma State University and an animal exercise researcher, said: "Before the race, the dogs' metabolic makeup is similar to humans'. ASSOCIATED PRESS 2004 race in the Iditarod somehow don't burn up their v. reserves and avoid the worst aspects of fatigue..