New Maine Lakes Index Will Rate Water Quality and Citizen Stewardship
A new Mitchell Center project will take a unique look at the health of Maine’s lakes. A collaborative team will introduce a two-pronged approach, looking at both water quality and levels of stakeholder engagement. It’s all part of the effort to develop a new lake vulnerability index for the state.
The project is a pilot program that includes evaluation of 20 Maine lakes. Team leader Aria Amirbahman, Professor in UMaine’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said the team‘s novel approach takes into account a plethora of factors: biological data that can help predict lakes’ future health, the number of volunteer lake monitors at each site plus a close-up look at these citizen groups to evaluate both the regularity of water sampling and volunteers’ degree of scientific know-how.
The need for well-trained volunteers is likely to grow over time.
“Climate change alters the chemistry of lakes,” Amirbahman said. “There are certain factors that make lakes very susceptible to these changes. The state does not have the resources. We need well-trained stewards, especially those who live around these lakes, to be their protectors.”
Collaborating on the project are the University of Southern Maine (USM), the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program (VLMP), and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The index will rate stakeholder engagement and water quality on an easy-to-understand scale. Team members also plan to use surveys and interviews to identify underlying factors that encourage successful collaborations between citizen monitors, homeowners, and lake associations. The data will be developed into a blueprint, laying out steps to successful stewardship.
It comes down to this, say team members: citizen involvement and stewardship are the game changers. As it stands, DEP has neither the personnel nor the budget to collect large numbers of lake water samples, nor do universities. VLMP, however, offers effective strategies for closing the gap. The non-governmental organization trains, certifies and provides technical support to regular citizens throughout Maine. More than 1,300 VLMP volunteers now monitor a wide range of lake health indicators on more than 450 freshwater bodies.
“The purpose of the study is to conduct research on the vulnerability of Maine lakes, some of which are experiencing a decline in water quality,” said Scott Williams, Executive Director of Maine VLMP and a researcher on the project. “But an equal goal of the project will be to involve volunteer monitors and their lake associations so they can communicate information gathered through this project to their respective communities. The ultimate goal of both elements of the project will be to enhance lake stewardship over time.”
The team has come up with a three by three matrix, which will rate water quality and citizen involvement on a scale of low, medium or high. The index will help researchers evaluate what kind of attention an individual lake needs, be it more water quality monitoring and remediation, more citizen stewardship or both.
Evaluation has already begun with significant variations. Lake Damariscotta, for example, is rated a double medium. Salmon Pond in the Belgrades has low water quality and high citizen involvement.
Team members will interact with citizen scientists on two fronts. Where necessary, they will train citizens to collect water and sediment samples, record temperatures and take other essential measurements. Then the team will take the samples and analyze them at UMaine.
The other component is a questionnaire, which will be sent to citizens in lakefront homeowners associations to measure their level of interest. Team members will then interact directly with citizens to explain results.
The idea is to foster a well-trained brigade of citizen scientists who can collect high quality samples and produce consistently accurate data. Though many of Maine’s lakes continue to have high water quality, Amirbahman said, many more should be closely monitored over time.