THE FINGER LAKES OF NEW YORK: AN IDEAL NATURAL LABORATORY FOR RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

The Finger Lakes of central and western New York provide an ideal natural laboratory for research and education because they provide a range of watershed areas, water residence times, land use activities, bedrock geologies, degree of water quality protection, and other characteristics. Despite being critical sources that provide Class AA drinking water to the surrounding communities, these lakes are threatened by a variety of pollutants, most notably nutrient loading from human and agricultural sources. Thus, limnological and other water quality data are essential to monitor the health and well being of these aquatic systems and provide recommendations to maintain the water quality in these lakes.

Monthly limnological data has been collected from the eight largest and most eastern Finger Lakes, Honeoye, Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles, and starting in 2008 Otisco, from at least two mid-lake sites from May through October over the past four years. This effort is part of a water quality monitoring effort by the Finger Lakes Institute, Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The data include CTD casts (Sea Bird SBE-25) of temperature, conductivity, depth, pH, dissolved oxygen, photosynthetically active radiation, fluorescence, and turbidity, plankton tows, secchi disk depths, and collection of surface and bottom water samples. The water samples are analyzed for nutrients (total phosphate, soluble reactive phosphate, nitrate, silica), chlorophyll, total suspended solids, and major ion concentrations back in the laboratory.

The data reveal water quality trends in each lake, and comparisons between the lakes. Annual mean data from each lake are ranked, where a low ranking means small concentrations or deep secchi disk depths. Mean rankings from each lake, fortuitously, correlate with the degree of water quality protection in the watershed and most likely reflect the degree of agricultural runoff and associated nutrient loading from the watershed. Projects in Owasco, Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are examples where overall poor rankings precipitated detailed analyses of the watershed to assess sources of and propose methods to reduce water quality impairments.