Lake Quality Monitoring

Excess loading of nutrients to lakes allows excessive amounts of algae to grow in the water column, contributing to poor water clarity and a loss of dissolved oxygen in the bottom waters after the algae sink and decompose at or near the lake bottom. As described in the water quality issues section, this process of eutrophication has resulted in the inability of cold-water fish to reproduce naturally in Lake Simcoe.

To investigate the significance of this problem, four "indicator" variables (total phosphorus (TP), chlorophyll a, Secchi disk visibility and dissolved oxygen) have been measured consistently at 12 sampling locations for several years by the Ministry of the Environment as described in the following sections.

Water Quality Targets
Parameters
Sampling Methodologies
Sampling Locations and Data Download