Citation:

Peck, Dave, Steve Paulsen, Phil Kaufmann, AND A. Herlihy. Jewels Across the Landscape: Monitoring and Assessing the Quality of Lakes & Reservoirs in the United States. Water Quality - Science, Assessments and Policy. IntechOpen, London, Uk, , 92286, (2020). https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92286

Impact/Purpose:

In 1896, lakes in Florida were described by an early naturalist as being “jewels” across the landscape, and this image is certainly applicable to lakes and reservoirs across the US. Since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, efforts at monitoring and assessing the ecological condition of lakes and reservoirs has evolved from a strategy focusing on single environmental threats such as eutrophication, or single water quality issues (chemistry) on selected lakes, to a more holistic approach to assess lake condition status and change at regional and national scales. The major tools to support this approach include various indicators of condition or stressor levels, survey designs to allow for inferences to be made to large populations of lakes, and protocols to acquire samples and data in a consistent manner at all sampled lakes. This book chapter describes the essential characteristics of the National Lakes Assessment (NLA), a unique partnership between the States and the US Environmental Protection Agency. The NLA is intended to allow us to rigorously characterize the status of our precious lake resource and track how we are treating it over time to better address the goal of the Clean Water Act…restoring, maintaining, and protecting the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s lakes and reservoirs.

Description:

An early naturalist described lakes as “jewels” across the landscape and indeed they were…early on. As we settled the country and began to tap the lake resource for our needs, things changed. Additionally, our thirst for water brought about the construction of impoundments from ice ponds to small stock ponds up to mainstem impoundments along our major rivers. So rather than just natural lakes in our northern tier of states, unique physiographic regions such as Florida and the Sand Hills of Nebraska, and the mountainous regions, we have lakes (impoundments) scattered across the entire landscape. In this chapter, we will describe efforts by an unique partnership between the States and the US Environmental Protection Agency to monitor and assess these system which go beyond single water quality (chemistry) issues and include their assessment toward the goal of the Clean Water Act…restoring, maintaining, and protecting the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s lakes and reservoirs.

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