DO Profile
Dissolved oxygen is among many water quality parameters monitored by AWI’s Adirondack Lake Assessment Program. A fundamental characteristic of lake ecosystems, dissolved oxygen drives the distribution of organisms and affects the solubility of important inorganic nutrients such as phosphorus. The atmosphere is the primary source of oxygen in a lake and, as a consequence, lakes in a stratified condition have a hypolimnion (deepest, coldest) layer that is isolated from the oxygen source. Though oxygen depletion occurs naturally in some lakes, nutrient enrichment can exacerbate the development of hypoxic conditions. Our research in Mirror Lake has also shown that road salt accumulation can also interfere with spring lake mixing and increase the spatial and temporal extent of anoxic conditions in the hypolimnion, with implications for lake trout. This piece is a representation of the dissolved oxygen profile from June – November 2017 in the South Basin of Upper Saranac Lake. Data for this from Laxson et al. (2018).
More info available here on Ravelry.