Modeling Wild Rice Lakes for Optimum Production

Assessment of aquifer properties, evapotranspiration, and the effects of ditching in the Stoney Brook watershed, Fond du Lac Reservation, Minnesota, 2006-9

“…1) in the early 1900s (Fond du Lac Natural Resources Program, 2013). Forty-seven miles of judicial ditches were installed in an effort to reduce the amount of water present on the land surface for agricultural purposes (Jacobsen, 2003;Fond du Lac Environmental Department, 2010). Rice Portage Lake, Jaskari Lake, Miller Lake, Hardwood Lake, and Dead Fish Lake were connected to the judicial ditch system ( fig.…”

“…Ditches installed in the early 1900s on the Fond du Lac Reservation in northern Minnesota lowered lake water levels and caused greater lake-level fluctuations (Jacobsen, 2003;Schwarzkopf and Defoe, 1999). Rice Portage Lake on the reservation lost more than 80 percent of its original surface area, declining from 635 acres in the early 1900s to 114 acres in the late 1990s (Schwarzkopf and Defoe, 1999).…”