Water quality, of critical importance to the ecological and social health of lake ecosystems, is maintained through complex interactions within lakes as well as between lakes and their watersheds. Often, water quality is managed by working toward improved water clarity, however, our ability to predict water clarity, and to manage lakes for it, is not always as successful as desired. Regional strategies for water clarity improvement often overlook the role of local environmental stewardship actions performed by lake associations on individual lakes across a region. Lake associations can act through directly altering biophysical drivers of clarity or the way that residents act within the system, demonstrating great potential to be incorporated into successful lake scale water quality management plans. We used a "bright spots" lens, in which we focus on those lakes whose water quality is higher than expected, to investigate the relationship between lake associations and water quality on 39 lakes in the Rideau Valley Lake Region (Ontario, Canada). We found that lake associations that are linked to "bright spot" lakes operate in a distinctly different way than other groups in the region, focusing on networking and advocacy activities instead of on ecological management. This points to the importance of working toward networking and advocacy goals as a future for lake stewardship groups in the Rideau Valley and other stewardship groups adapting this approach to their own social-ecological contexts.

Panarchy illustrates the dynamic nature of social-ecological systems and their nestedness and interconnectedness through time and space. Although there have been great advances in ecosystem service (ES) research, it has only rarely integrated dynamic interaction of components in social-ecological systems (SES). We explore how Panarchy theory, and especially its detailed reflections on change and system dynamics, could help ES research to better capture the dynamics of change into its fundamental assumptions. We do this by outlining four main conclusions of Panarchy theory: multiple states, the adaptive cycle, variances of the adaptive cycle, and change and persistence for sustainability. We illustrate how these aspects can be incorporated in ES research and conclude with recommendations for the field.