Tributary Quality Monitoring

The health of the aquatic habitats both in the streams within the watershed and in their outlet, Lake Simcoe, is impacted by a number of anthropogenic activities. The significance of such impacts varies according to land use within each stream's subwatershed and environmental conditions such as groundwater discharge, stream morphology and soil type. The intent of the tributary quality monitoring is to establish the relative health of the stream ecosystem in conjunction with benthic invertebrate monitoring as well as to quantify phosphorus inputs to the lake.

There are two programs in the Lake Simcoe Watershed that monitor tributary water quality. Under the LSEMS initiative, nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, are the primary focus of the sampling program. In partnership with the Ministry of the Environment, the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority also participates in the Provincial Water Quality Monitoring Network to monitor ambient water quality across the Lake Simcoe. These programs are described in the following sections.

Parameters
Sampling Methodologies
Sampling Locations and Data Download