LONG LAKE FIRE RECONSTRUCTION

Chain O’ Lakes State Park is located in Noble County, in northeastern Indiana. The park consists

of nine interconnected lakes, with depths that range from 1-20 m. The lake chain is part of a

system of kettle lakes that formed in the Pleistocene, during glacial recession, which are linked

by a single river that flows from east to west through the region. Today the landscape around the

park is mostly farmland, except for a small forest immediately adjacent to the lake and river

system. Our project was originally designed to explore the impact of eutrophication through a

chain of interconnected lakes, and the impacts of development and agriculture on the system of

lakes over the last two centuries. We collected a set of Livingstone cores spanning 1.5 meters

from Long Lake, the first large dominantly lacustrine lake in the chain, in order to establish a

long-term baseline nutrient level for the lake systems through analysis of fossil diatoms. Because

the sediments from Long Lake indicated a dynamic fire history, we subsequently have attempted

to reconstruct the history of Fire in the basin through sedimentary charcoal analysis. Here we

present preliminary results of the fire history, combined with results from the diatom analysis, to

provide a more complete interpretation of the recent history of land-use changes and fire history

of the Chain O'Lake State Park region