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Book Review
| Lake Michigan in Motion: Response of an Inland Sea to Weather, Earth-spin, and Human Activities. By Clifford Mortimer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. xix + 310 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, bibliography, index. $45.00.
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| In Lake Michigan in Motion, distinguished limnologist Clifford Mortimer draws upon more than forty years of personal experimentation and study focused upon the workings of Lake Michigan. He is thus superbly qualified to recount the history of inquiry into the dynamics of the huge volume of water that fills Lake Michigan, the only one of the Great Lakes entirely within the borders of the United States. The book is primarily concerned with the action of waves in Lake Michigan and what determines these movements, but Mortimer also devotes chapters to related topics such as sediment movement, water levels, and temperature variation. |
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Organized scientific study of Lake Michigan can be dated back to the Cass Expedition of 1820, led by Lewis Cass, the governor of what was then the Michigan Territory. Mortimer shows how some of the investigations of Lake Michigan carried out in the nineteenth century are still of great use today in understanding change over time or, conversely, the continuity of certain conditions. Throughout the book, the author describes in clear, succinct language the wide array of tools and methods that scientists have used to refine their observations of the lake and test theories about its behavior. Much of the research has been driven by disasters such as shipwrecks and long-term problems like the decline of fisheries and water pollution. In recent decades, satellite imaging and ever-more powerful computers have added greatly to research endeavors. |
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The sometime arcane processes that Mortimer addresses have significant effects on lake functions and characteristics that are of great importance to the surrounding human population. Examples of such topics include the erosion of shore lines by wave action, the formation of storm surges that can wreak havoc on developed coastal areas, and the influence of seasonal temperature stratification on lake eutrophication (nutrient over-enrichment). Mortimer also discusses how recent studies have demonstrated that the impact of discharging heated water to Lake Michigan from power plants and other sources—a topic of great concern in the early 1970s—has been largely localized and has not had the lakewide effects once feared. The long-term impact of global warming on the lake, however, may be a different story. |
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In addition to the author's lucid writing style and mastery of the relevant literature, another strength of the book is the large number of photographs and diagrams that effectively illustrate the phenomena under discussion. But historians without much scientific background should be forewarned that the discussion is often quite technical and that the book is also filled with a large number of sometimes complex graphs. Lake Michigan in Motion will be most useful to scholars researching topics related to lake behavior. |
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Terence Kehoe is a senior research associate with Morgan, Angel & Associates, a public policy consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. |
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