Studying Adirondack Lakes & Streams In The Winter
Even though our boats are all wrapped up for the season, or tucked away in the pole barn on the Paul Smith's College campus, our work to study Adirondack lakes and streams doesn't stop. At this time of year it's easy to let our minds wander away from the beautiful Adirondack lakes we know and love. Docks are pulled, camps are closed, and many folks are south enjoying warmer weather. While Adirondack lakes are quieter this time of year, our staff is still out collecting samples and data that helps us understand how climate change, road salt, and other stressors are impacting Adirondack lakes.
One of the only lakes in the Adirondack region to be intensely monitored in the winter is Mirror Lake, in the Village of Lake Placid. Winter is the most important time of year for us to be working on this lake because this is when road salt runoff enters the lake through stormwater runoff. Every two weeks we head out with our partners at the Ausable River Association, drill holes in the ice, and collect water samples and other data from the water below. A year-and-a-half ago we installed a permanent buoy in the lake in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Rose at RPI, and each winter we let it freeze in the ice. Every 15-minutes, all year long, the buoy records water temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll concentration data. This is giving us a picture of the ecology of Mirror Lake we've never seen before.
Our work isn't only focused on lakes, our field crews are also out in ice covered streams measuring salt concentrations and discharge. We have ten streams outfitted with instrumentation that records the amount of road salt and water moving through them every 15-minutes. We recently published an update to our stream monitoring work in the Blue Mountain Lake watershed.
As the snow flies and the temperatures dip into the sub-zero range, know that we're still hard at work studying Adirondack lakes, streams, and their watersheds.
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