"ALGAL growth in remote Arctic lakes is confirming what ecologists suspected all along - that entire freshwater ecosystems are altering in response to climate change. Neal Michelutti and his colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton collected 30-centimeter core samples from the bottom of six lakes on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. From levels of chlorophyll a in the sediment, which they measured using a technique called reflectance spectroscopy, they deduced that plant life in the lakes began to increase 150 years ago and is now growing almost exponentially year by year. The most likely reason for the change is climate warming, Michelutti says