This morning Helen Morrison asked this question:

I wonder if Kelly also tests (or does someone) for phosphates and nitrates in the water...from fertilizers and farm/manure run off?  With all the rain, that could add to the Pond's count.  And then, of course, we could get algae blooms.

Just curious.

I posed the question to Kellie Merrell, and I thought others may be interested in her response:

Hi Jane,

That is part of the monitoring that I do on all the inland lakes in Vermont.  However, with so many lakes and only myself and my colleague sampling, we have to rotate across the lakes in the state that we sample to get to them all over time.  The primary program we use to monitor phosphorus and nitrogen in our lakes is the post ice out sampling I do when the lakes turn over and are fully mixed in the spring 7-10 days after ice out.  I did sample Joes this spring (along with 75 other lakes or so) and the results were not out of the lab prior to me heading back into the field for summer lake assessments now.  So, I won’t have the latest numbers QC’d and graphed until this winter.  For more frequent monitoring of phosphorus, water clarity and chlorophyll a (a measure of water column algae) we heavily rely on our lay monitors to collect that data weekly for us in the summer.  I know some lay monitors only do the water clarity reading, but it really helps when our volunteers collect the phosphorus and chlorophyll a samples as well.  Without our lay monitors, it can take longer for me to determine if there is a troubling trend associated with increasing nutrients in a particular lake.   Bethany Sargent is the head of the Lay Monitoring Program and she will be compiling the data collected on Joes this summer that will help answer Helen’s question….which is a very good one!

Best Regards,

Kellie