Sebago Lake

SESSION H: Sebago Lake – A Trillion Gallons of Challenge

Session Co-chairs: Brie Holme and Kirsten Ness, Portland Water District

Session Description: The drinking water source for 200,000 people, Sebago Lake is one of Maine’s most important natural resources. While the lake has excellent water quality, it is one of the state’s most popular recreation destinations and the 300,000-acre watershed is mostly privately owned. This session will cover topics including water quality, partnerships at work in the Sebago Lake watershed, and threats to water bodies and/or land in the watershed.

Presentations Available

Session Overview

8:30-8:55 am
Hello, My Name is Sebago Lake
Paul Hunt, Kirsten Ness, Portland Water District

Sebago Lake is one of Maine’s most important natural resources because it is used by so many for so much. The lake holds nearly a trillion gallons of water, and almost everyone in Cumberland County lives near it, plays on it, or drinks it. The Portland Water District utilizes the lake as a public drinking water supply, and it is one of only about 50 surface water supplies in the country so clean that it doesn’t require filtration. The Sebago Lake watershed is 436 square miles in size, extends from Standish to Bethel, and includes land in 23 towns. Despite being a multiuse lake, Sebago Lake water quality is outstanding. Though the lake is clean today, it faces many challenges including: invasive species, disputes over lake level, significant shoreline development, conversion of forested watershed land to developed land, and the presence of an oil pipeline in the watershed. Protecting the lake and addressing these challenges requires the cooperation and support of numerous partners. This presentation will provide an introduction to Sebago Lake and its watershed, describe some of the challenges that confront it, and discuss the partnerships that help protect it.

9:00-9:25 am
High Resolution Monitoring in the Upper Sebago Lake Watershed
Colin Holme and Amanda Pratt, Lakes Environmental Association

For the past four decades, the Lakes Environmental Association (LEA) has been sampling lakes and ponds in the upper Sebago Lake watershed using traditional, field-based water quality monitoring techniques. In 2013, LEA began deploying small HOBO pendant temperature sensors in several waterbodies and then greatly expanded the program in 2014. These battery-operated sensors capture and store a whole season’s worth of temperature data and allow a much more detailed understanding of water column structure. The sensors also allow for a longer field season on a limited budget. The presenters will discuss how these sensors were funded, deployed, retrieved and what was used to analyze and present the data. Also in the summer of 2014, LEA deployed a fully automated water monitoring buoy on Highland Lake which was outfitted with temperature and oxygen sensors from the surface to the bottom, a fluorometer and light attenuations sensors. The buoy provided real-time data on oxygen, temperature, clarity, and algae populations and is part of the growing network of Maine buoys as well as the worldwide Global Lake Ecology Observatory Network (GLEON). The presenters will discuss their findings after the first year of deployment, which include a detailed “fingerprint” of oxygen depletion over time and correlation to LEA’s long-term, field based monitoring program.

9:30-9:55 am
Land use and land cover patterns for the Sebago Lake watershed using Landsat Operational Land Imager
Firooza Pavri, Paul Morris, Jared Lank

Sebago Lake’s importance as a source of public water supply to numerous southern Maine communities requires vigilant monitoring efforts. Monitoring allows for timely and appropriate conservation interventions and alternatives, which can in turn support the sustainability of this system. This study uses Landsat Operational Land Imager data from summer 2013 to provide a spatially explicit analysis of large scale land use and cover patterns across the Sebago watershed. The field of landscape ecology provides a framework to systematically consider landscape patterns resulting from economic development and growth. We use NOAA’s Habitat Priority Planner toolkit to map and compare patterns of landscape fragmentation across sub-watersheds within the larger Sebago basin. Our results suggest a greater fragmentation of forest and green-cover parcels across the watershed and more intense development activity around the vicinity of Sebago Lake and in the lower regions of the watershed. Residential and economic development activities have resulted in documentable land use and cover changes across the region.

10:00-10:25 am
Profiles of Woodland Stewardship: The Portland Water District
Andrew Shultz, Landowner Outreach Forester, Maine Forest Service

In Standish, Maine, in the Presumpscot River watershed, the Portland Water District owns and manages forest land around Sebago Lake with one major goal in mind: clean drinking water. This “Profile of Woodland Stewardship” video will demonstrate the close connection between well-managed woodland and water quality.

The “Profiles of Woodland Stewardship” video series documents real-world, concrete examples of sustainable forest management. It features woodland owners and the people, both professional and others, who work and interact with them, telling their stewardship story in their own words. The landowners profiled are models; their woodlands are visible demonstrations of conservation applied on the ground.

The oral presentation around the video showing will focus on the availability of technical and cost-share assistance for woodland owners in the Presumpscot Watershed, starting with MFS District Foresters, and including referrals to private forestry consultants and professional timber harvesting contractors.