Jewels across the Landscape: Monitoring and Assessing the Quality of Lakes and Reservoirs in the United States

Abstract

An early naturalist described lakes as "jewels" across the landscape and indeed they were…at the end of the nineteenth century. As we settled the country and began to utilize the lake resource for our needs, things changed. Additionally, our needs for water brought about the construction of impoundments from ice ponds to small stock ponds up to mainstem impoundments along our major rivers. The lake resource in the United States now includes natural lakes in our northern tier of states, unique physiographic regions such as Florida and the Sand Hills of Nebraska, and the mountainous regions, and impoundments scattered across the entire landscape. In this chapter, we will describe efforts by an unique partnership between the individual states and tribal nations of the USA and the US Environmental Protection Agency to monitor and assess these systems. These efforts go beyond single water quality (chemistry) issues and include assessments targeting the goal of the Clean Water Act, namely, restoring, maintaining, and protecting the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's lakes and reservoirs.

Heterogenous controls on lake color and trends across the high-elevation U.S. Rocky Mountain region

“…Conversely, in some shallow lakes, the color that satellites detect may be capturing benthic algal growth, which can make up a majority of the lake productivity in systems where photic zone extends to the benthos (Lõugas et al, 2020). Overall, these spatial patterns are consistent with studies describing continental scale patterns of lake trophic status and water quality, which indicate that high-elevation western mountain ecoregions are generally oligotrophic, with higher prevalence of green, turbid, or eutrophic lakes in plains and agricultural ecoregions (Hill et al, 2018;Hollister et al, 2016;Peck et al, 2020).…”

Comparison of caddisfly (Insecta, Trichoptera) assemblages from lake and river habitats of the Huron Mountains of Michigan (USA)

“…Without truly undisturbed reference sites for comparison, however, it is difficult to accurately evaluate current species composition or ecological functioning of freshwater ecosystems. This problem is especially true for lake ecosystems, as research on the biotic assemblages and potential for anthropogenic disturbance of such habitats has lagged far behind that of river habitats ( Peck et al 2020 ; Fergus et al 2021 ). Thus, quantifying assemblages of ecologically important aquatic insect taxa within undisturbed reference sites, especially those of lakes, should be a scientific priority.…”