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Monthly Archives
Volunteer Scientists Celebrate 25 Years of Lake Monitoring
A boat anchors over the deep spot of the lake and the passengers
start lowering something into the water watching its descent through
a long viewing tube to check water clarity. Then one person slowly reels
out a weighted line reading off numbers while the other writes down these
measurements that sound like water temperatures (they are!). Then they
take what looks like a garden hose and use it to fill a large dark bottle.
They pull up anchor and head back to process the samples onshore.
Perhaps you witnessed a scene something like this the last time you visited
a New Hampshire lake. If so, you were watching a volunteer lake monitor
in action. For more than 25 years, New Hampshire residents who live on
or near a lake and care about it have put in tens of thousands of volunteer
hours conducting this type of activity. Their work has led to a much better
understanding and appreciation of the state’s lakes. It has also
allowed local citizens to inform their local communities to better protect,
preserve and improve lake water quality.
The New Hampshire Lakes Lay Monitoring Program (NH LLMP),
founded in 1978, was conceived by University of New Hampshire (UNH) faculty
as a way to involve local residents in collecting baseline lake water quality
data for detecting long-term trends and locating problem areas.
Our original outreach intentions were twofold: to provide unbiased data
for informed local lake management, and to create an opportunity for participants
to gain hands-on understanding of water resource concepts and issues. We
didn’t anticipate that our statewide “army” of volunteer
scientists would prove invaluable in advancing applied research important
to lake and watershed management decisions, or that our model of citizen
science would spread to 35 states and a dozen foreign nations.
Volunteers’ questions spur new research
After working as lakes monitors for awhile, our volunteers began raising
some very interesting questions about the health of the lake and its wildlife.
Questions like how increased boating activity affects our lakes, or if
there been a change in the health of lake fisheries. After consulting with
state agencies and researchers, we devised methods to start addressing
these questions and others, using our volunteers to provide the lion’s
share of the person-power needed to monitor the waters.
Working with researchers from the UNH Center for Freshwater Biology, NH
LLMP volunteers documented fishery health in a wide range of lakes, reporting
the data to our N.H. Fish & Game Department partner in the project,
who used it in their own assessments.
We also found that motorized watercraft can have very different levels
of impact, dependent on the lake characteristics like bottom composition
and water depth, as well as how and in what areas the craft operate in.
On the statewide scale, NH LLMP data demonstrated a relationship between
the nutrient phosphorus and algae growth, in support of a ban on phosphate-containing
detergents. LLMP water clarity data demonstrated the economic impact to
property values when water quality declines.
NH LLMP data delivers a range of powerful impacts
Using volunteers to help conduct intensive studies of a lake’s watershed
(the drainage area around the lake) has allowed for very cost effective
monitoring. Such a study on Lake Chocorua gained national attention, as
the resulting information led to the reduction of pollutants coming from
roadway runoff next to the lake.
The Lake Chocorua project is not the first major success story of the
NH LLMP. Over its 25 plus years of operation, the program has chalked up
many accomplishments:
- In-lake nutrient samples were used to call for improved landscaping
practices, reducing impacts of a shoreline condominium development.
- Lake monitoring efforts were a major reason for highway route changes
around a wetland bordering a lake. NH LLMP monitoring results has allowed
lakes to receive federal and state assistance.
- Sewer system bonds have been passed using NH LLMP monitoring information.
- Vegetated buffer zones and shoreline setbacks were expanded for a lake
at risk.
- Poorly planned, high-impact development projects have been scuttled
by communities using NH LLMP results.
- “No-rafting” zones (prohibition of dense congregations of moored boats) have been posted in shallow bays, based on weekend- versus-weekday nutrient level monitoring by LLMP volunteers.
New Hampshire joins many other states in celebrating July as Lakes Appreciation Month. How appropriate that this month we also celebrate the 25-year effort and successes of our NH LLMP volunteer monitors.
by Jeffrey Schloss, UNH Cooperative Extension Water Resources Specialist
For more information
- The Lakes Lay Monitoring Program
- UNH Center for Freshwater Biology
- National Volunteer Monitor Newsletter Article on the Lake Chocorua Project (page 4)
- EPA Non-point Program success story on Chocorua Project
- National Volunteer Monitor Newsletter on Participatory Research in more detail (page 22)
- USDA CSREES National Volunteer Monitoring Website
- USDA Regional ( New England ) Water Quality Website
- Lakes Appreciation Month
- Recent research on water clarity comparisons (see page 17)