V
arious sampling techniques will be used
in the NELP project:
*" Knowing what kind of plants and animals
live in a lake provides a good picture of its
overall health. Electrofishing provides a
representation of the larger animals, while
netting plankton will show what smaller,
even microscopic, animals and plants live
in the lake. After counting the fish and
examining them for overall health, they are
returned unharmed to the lake—though
occasionally a few fish are taken to the lab to
be analyzed for various contaminants.
^ An assessment of larger aquatic vegetation
will provide a crucial indicator of the lake's
condition, as well as show the presence or
absence of nuisance exotic, orinvasive, plants.
Land use around the lake is considered as
well, through the application of various well
established land cover models.
> Knowingthe historical condition of the lake
can help us set goals for the future. Core
samples of sediment from the lake bottom
can help us understand current conditions,
as well as what changes have occurred in the
lake's condition over hundreds of years.
Assembling these and other parameters together,
and analyzing them for each lake, as well as for the
whole set of lakes, will provide a picture of the
condition of New England's lakes and ponds.
If you are interested in knowing more
about NELP, and other efforts being
made to protect our fresh waters, call the
EPA's Region 1 office at: 888-372-7341,
or log on to: http://www.epa.gov/ne/lab.
If you would like to help, most states have
volunteer monitoring programs and there
are many local Lake Management Asso-
ciations. If your lake doesn't have one yet,
maybe you could help to get one started.
s Environmental Monitoring
' . and Assessment Program (EMAP), a
national, long-term effort to assess status and
trends of aquatic ecosystems across the U.S.
with a known statistical confidence, has been
ongoing since the late 1980s. In the 1990s,
the Regional Environmental Monitoring and
Assessment Program (REMAP), was initiated
to apply the EMAP approach at regional and
local scales. These programs provide the
research needed to determine the condition
of the nation's resources, a necessary step in
the Agency's overall strategy for environmen-
tal protection and restoration. NELP is part
of a continuing REMAP effort to assess the
ecologicalhealth of vital fresh water resources
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency New England
EPA 901-F-06-002
March 2006
New England
Lakes & Ponds
Project
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
New England Regional Laboratory
The mission of the EPA is to protect human health
and the environment. Since 1970, EPA has been
working for a cleaner, healthier environment for
the American people.
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INEIWPCC
Vermont Agency
of Natural Resources
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency New England
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Starting in 2006, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), along with the
New England Interstate Water Pollution Control
Commission (NEIWPCQ, state environmental
agencies, and other partners are assessing the
current water quality and ecological condition of
lakes and ponds throughout New England. The
New England Lakes and Ponds Project (NELP)
will take place over a six year period.
The EPA and its partners will be collecting
chemical, physical, and biological data from a set of
up to 300 lakes. These lakes were chosen through
a rigorous statistical process to ensure an accurate
geographic representation of all the lakes through-
out the region. The data will be used to identify
current stresses on ecological health, and to guide
management strategies for the protection and
enhancement of New England's surface waters.
Fish are caught using the
EPA's electro-fishing boat.
Prime
habitat
Collection of water for
chemical analysis.
The condition of the environment is always
changing. Some changes are subtle, some
are dramatic. Surface waters—streams, ponds,
lakes and estuaries—and the organisms they
support can reflect these changes clearly, through
the composition of the water and the communities
of aquatic plants and animals. By monitoring the
chemistry and other aspects of water, as well as the
community of organisms living in and around it,
scientists can provide policy makers with informa-
tion to help protect this res ource that we all depend
on and value.
Tie ecological quality of fresh waterbodies
s affected by many factors, including local
geology, climate, land cover, and human impacts,
both positive and negative. Some of the lakes
in this project are expected to be of the highest
quality that currently exists, while others may be
heavily impacted. Drawing comparisons between
them will help us understand how to protect those
most sensitive to human influenced stresses, and
how to repair and manage those in declining or
degraded ecological condition.
Raising nets
through the
water column to
collect plankton
samples.
Examining the catch.
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