While classes taught abroad are impactful for many CC students, the Environmental Science course Ecology and Management of Shallow Lakes had a special meaning for Emily Marple ’25, Olivia Spencer ’25, and Lucy Hylton ’25, who used the class to prepare for a five-week internship at ENKI, a research institution in Třeboň, Czech Republic.
Nine students were in the Czech Republic taking the Block A class, but Marple, Spencer, and Hylton stayed abroad to conduct research upon finishing the course. They will use the research they are conducting at ENKI for their senior thesis projects once they return to campus in the fall.
ENKI was formed in the early 2000s by a group of scientists from the Czech Academy of Science to provide a platform that would integrate applied and basic research in ecosystem and landscape ecology. ENKI primarily works with aquatic ecosystems, but also explores questions focused on the role of vegetation in creating local climates.
Dr. Miro Kummel, the Environmental Science professor who taught the Block A course, was first introduced to ENKI when he was in high school and worked with two of the primary scientists on a project that led to a restoration of a large lake in the center of his hometown of Jindrichuv Hradec, Czech Republic. He then did his senior thesis with the ENKI team that focused on competition among phytoplankton. Kummel has completed multiple successful projects with the organization over the past 20 years, including a paper they published in 2021 that focused on oxygen regimes in shallow lakes. Kummel had students intern at ENKI for the first time in 2016, when he taught Introduction to Global Climate Change.
The class schedule for the Block A course changed daily, as students spent some days in the field, collecting samples and learning field techniques, and other days working on their own independent research projects. Students stayed in a large townhouse in Klec, a small rural town. During the evenings they cooked and experienced the local culture together. Students spent weekends visiting nearby cities, including Český Krumlov and Prague, touring castles and museums, and biking to lakes in and around Klec. While this class was open to all, students interested in continuing their research at ENKI had to apply through a process for senior thesis opportunities.
“I hope that the students and the interns will get a deep appreciation for socio-ecological systems — most of the lakes we study were constructed by medieval peasants 500-600 years ago, while some are up to 1,000 years old, and they still provide livelihood to the people and ecosystem services to the region,” Kummel says. “The class focused on science, but at the same time the context of the class and our class discussions chip away at the false dichotomy of ‘People’ vs. ‘Nature’ and the U.S. romantic vision of wilderness as the only form of nature worthy of protection. They see how culture and history come together to shape an ecosystem and how over a millennium that ecosystem shapes the people who thrive there.”
Kummel also hopes that students left the Block A class with a solid understanding of the actual inner workings of an aquatic ecosystem and how to manage and restore it. “I hope they took with them a wonder that comes from seeing a new world of fascinating creatures that unfolds when you examine even a single drop of lake water under a microscope.”
“This class provided the foundational knowledge for the research,” says Marple, an Organismal Biology and Ecology major with a double minor in REMS and Environmental Studies. “We learned a lot — from data collection techniques, lake ecology, species specific to the Czech Republic, and the language. Additionally, we learned a lot of the history of the area specific to the development of fishponds. Having the time to get to know the area, culture, and language has been super helpful since we are independently working with researchers at ENKI.”
Students in the limnology class learned about management practices, common bird species, different types of zooplankton, water quality testing and interpretation, and various techniques for collecting specific samples. They also researched nutrient and oxygen regimes in various shallow lakes under different managements and worked on sampling. Marple, Spencer, and Hylton were responsible for data collection and analysis following the end of the class as they transitioned into the internship.
During their internship, the three rising seniors continue to specifically look at phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish communities and how they interact with abiotic components such as oxygen, sunlight, and nutrients to form the lake system. They are spending their time abroad collecting and analyzing data to understand how each of these factors interact together and how they change throughout the summer. They will then pick a piece of this project to focus on for their thesis projects upon returning to campus in the fall.
All lakes, including constructed lakes, can take on different alternate stable regimes, such as turbid water with suspended phytoplankton or clear water states with a thick carpet of submerged aquatic vegetation covering the bottom. Scientists are still unsure how these states develop, how stable they are, and what impact they have on the oxygen regime of the system. Both the Block A class and the student interns researched lakes within the Třeboň Basin Biospheric Reserve and are following the seasonal development of the stable states. At the current moment, the lake has one state in about half of its area and the other in the other half, and it is not yet clear which way it will go or if these two otherwise incompatible states will coexist by dividing the lake. Kummel, Marple, Spencer, and Hylton are taking daily measurements of the biological, physical, and chemical parameters of the lake, including oxygen, which they log in ten-minute intervals. Once a week they map the distribution of the bottom swelling carpet of aquatic vegetation, as well as the distribution of suspended phytoplankton, which they do by hand from a boat and then combine that data with the drone-generated areal data. Kummel says this high resolution spatial and temporal study is unique in the field and they are expecting to publish an article on it by the end of this coming academic year.
“The Block A course not only gave us the opportunity to practice specialized sampling techniques and processes, but also gave us the foundational knowledge base required to be successful in a new environment,” says Spencer, an Environmental Science major and Anthropology minor. “Personally, shallow lake ecology is a niche which I have never investigated intensively. With the combination of this foundation, further advising from Dr. Kummel, and support and expertise from the researchers at ENKI, I hope to have a solid knowledge base and support system to produce original and professional research.”
Spencer rediscovered her love for ecology and biology last fall when she took Kummel’s Ecology and the Environment class in Costa Rica.
“When Miro mentioned the opportunity to continue studying ecology under his guidance for a thesis, I leaped at the opportunity,” says Spencer, who was most excited about getting to spend time in the field and is looking forward to practicing what she’s learned through the internship. “Many of the methods of data collection we are using are completely new to me and getting to practice them during the class in preparation for formal research has been a joy.”
Hylton, an Environmental Science major and REMS minor, is interested in studying environmental issues and solutions with an emphasis on their relation to and impact on underrepresented communities.
“Growing up in Minnesota fostered my deep appreciation of lakes, so I was drawn to EV320 as a way to look more closely into the preservation and stewardship of these resources,” Hylton says. “The five-week internship with ENKI aligns excellently with my academic and professional goals, as I would like to pursue a career in aquatic science and management.”
Last fall, Hylton conducted similar research with the Sea Education Association, where they studied marine science in New Zealand, focusing heavily on hearing from local communities when discussing environmental solutions. “This experience strengthened my resolve to continue studying environmental science and human-climate interactions, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to explore lake ecology further through my research with ENKI, as well as develop my thesis in this area.”
While interning, Marple, Spencer, and Hylton are living in the upstairs office spaces at ENKI that were lent to them by the scientists. Kummel stayed in the same town as the students during the first week so they could all work together to plan the daily and weekly tasks and standardize their sampling techniques and framework for data analysis.
“We spent the past few days canoeing along predetermined transect lines on Rod Lake, recording measurements and taking macrophyte samples,” Hylton says. “We then sorted and weighed each sample to find the dominant species and connect noticeable trends in species with differing water quality conditions.”
Their future work includes drone analysis, recording zooplankton diversity and density, and continuing to map changes in macrophytes, with the overarching goal of understanding the changes in Rod Lake throughout the summer.
While Hylton came into the Block A course with prior experience studying zooplankton, phytoplankton, and water quality, she was excited to discover an entirely new system of measurement and analysis strategies.
“As we begin to think through our thesis projects and gain more autonomy with our research, I am grateful to have gained the skills necessary to tailor my work to this unique environment, under the expert guidance of Professor Miro and the scientists at ENKI,” Hylton says. “For example, Rod Lake, which we have focused on throughout Block A, has recently begun a dramatic ecological shift caused by increasing macrophyte density, and this is just one of the many factors I am excited to look more closely into in order to understand the environmental significance and broader implications.”