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).