Thanks to Merritt Blakeslee for contributing this article!
West Harbor Pond in Boothbay Harbor is not your ordinary Maine lake. It came into being in 1880 when an entrepreneur dammed the mouth of Campbell’s Cove, a tidal saltwater estuary of Boothbay Harbor, for use as an ice pond. To render the impounded water suitable for making natural ice, a 10-inch cast-iron siphon was installed to evacuate the saltwater.
Normal freshwater lakes experience seasonal turnover that reoxygenates the deoxygenated water below the thermocline, ensuring the health of the aquatic environment. Until recently, however, West Harbor Pond did not experience this turnover because it had never been completely free of saltwater.
Route 27 causeway at lower end of West Harbor Pond with 1880 siphon (red) and 2018 replacement siphon (orange)
Jeremy Deeds (Maine DEP)
Consider the two lakes in the photographs above. The one on the left is smaller and shallower with abundant aquatic plant growth. The lake on the right is larger, deeper, and aquatic plants grow sparsely in isolated sections along its shore. Different as they are, these lakes share similarities, too. They are both found in largely undeveloped watersheds and have naturally vegetated shorelands. Since they are both in watersheds with minimal human-induced changes to the landscape, should we expect them to have similar water quality conditions? Now imagine that each lake had 100% of its shoreland area converted to residential house lots, manicured lawns, hundreds of septic tanks, and a network of dirt roads. How would the water quality in these lakes change? Would they both change in the same way, or would we expect these lakes to respond to those land use modifications differently?
Drive approximately 270 miles west from Bethel, Maine, and you will come to the Adirondack Park, 6.1 million acres that contain more than 10,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, and an estimated 200,000 acres of old-growth forest. In an excellent video about Adirondack lake science, researchers describe how they have been sampling hundreds of lakes in the Park using a custom-built twin-prop float plane. They also explain how wetlands, upland vegetation communities and atmospheric pollution (nitrogen, especially) influence lake water chemistry.
This well-produced video is a great introduction to some facets of lake science - ecosystem processes that are as relevant to Maine lakes as they are to the lakes of upstate New York.
Visit Lake Stewards of Maine's web site for the latest news and information.
Click here to view current water quality conditions on a representative sample of Maine lakes during summer, or view which lakes have experienced ice-cover in the fall and ice-out in the spring.
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