Dr. Bird organized and participated in the first sonar surveys of Pavilion Lake in the late 1990’s. In September 2005, He and graduate student Geoff Mullins completed a detailed 3D sonar survey of the lake and are now in the process of analyzing the data. Dr. Bird also completed several drop-camera surveys of isolated areas in the lake including the deep mounds that were discovered from the sonar data. 3D sonar data is important for defining large scale growth patterns of the microbialite fields, determining bottom topography, finding new microbialite fields, and determining bottom composition.