Flathead Lake Biological Station: A Century of Watching the Water

In eighteen ninety-nine, a biologist named Morton Elrod convinced the University of Montana to establish a field research station near Bigfork, which moved to Yellow Bay on Flathead Lake in nineteen oh nine. It was a prescient decision. The Flathead Lake Biological Station, which still operates on the lake's eastern shore near Polson, became one of the longest-running freshwater research programs in the American West.

For more than a century, scientists here have tracked water temperature, clarity, chemistry, fish populations, and the introduction and spread of invasive species. The data sets are extraordinary in their depth. When opossum shrimp were introduced into the Flathead drainage by well-meaning fisheries managers, and then spread into the lake hoping to boost the food chain, they instead ate the zooplankton that native fish depended on, crashing kokanee salmon populations. The lake recovered partially, but the episode became a widely cited case study in the unintended consequences of species introductions. Today the station monitors dozens of variables in the lake and the Flathead watershed, tracking one of the cleanest large lakes in the world as the climate around it continues to change.