{"id":6582,"date":"2021-02-25T20:56:20","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T20:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/?p=6582"},"modified":"2021-03-01T12:53:49","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:53:49","slug":"on-the-state-of-sandy-lake-in-early-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/2021\/02\/25\/on-the-state-of-sandy-lake-in-early-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"On the State of Sandy Lake in early 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Swimmers left the beach at Sandy Lake Beach Park after an unpleasant algal bloom<\/a> appeared suddenly in the morning of Aug 6, 2019.\u00a0 \u00a0 The bloom dissipated within a few days. It was as\u00a0 an ‘early warning sign’ that the lake is in a precarious state.<\/p><\/div>\n

Since I began conducting observations on “Sandy Lake & Environs” in June 0f 2017, I have\u00a0 compiled a variety of observations related to Sandy Lake itself and associated streams and wetlands.<\/p>\n

The observations included descriptions of wetland communities, some ‘limnological profiles” at deep spots in Sandy Lake, and many measurements of\u00a0 temperature, electrical conductivity ( a measure of the salt content) and\u00a0 pH of lake and stream waters. Derek Sarty, Bruce Sarty and Ed Glover have assisted with many of these observations.<\/p>\n

I have been reporting the observations on various pages of this website, and it was getting difficult even for me to keep track if it all. So I decided I should put ‘the whole story’, including a review of previous studies, in one place.<\/p>\n

That turned out to be a bigger job than I had anticipated as\u00a0 there\u00a0 were many loose ends to clean up and a lot of\u00a0 pertinent scientific literature I needed to review. Anyway,\u00a0 it all \u00a0made it to a full Draft a few days ago: see A DRAFT Report On the\u00a0 State of Sandy Lake, the Historical Trends and its Future Trajectory<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not a light read, but there is\u00a0 \u00a0a summary version.<\/a><\/p>\n

There is good news and there is concerning news to come out of the exercise.<\/p>\n

The concerning part: in a nutshell, Sandy Lake is in a precarious state, in large part associated with increased input of nutrients, organics and road salt\u00a0 associated with\u00a0 development (houses, roads industrial operations) within the watershed.<\/p>\n

The good news, from the report:<\/p>\n

Sandy Lake represents an enviable situation where we still have the option of choosing the most effective way to prevent the predictable and largely inevitable deterioration of a treasured lake associated with increasing urbanization: to strongly limit as yet unapproved development in the watershed, especially close to the lake itself and to streams draining into the lake. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View Summary<\/a><\/p>\n

View Full Report<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I began conducting observations on “Sandy Lake & Environs” in June 0f 2017, I have\u00a0 compiled a variety of observations related to Sandy Lake itself and associated streams and wetlands. The observations included descriptions of wetland communities, some ‘limnological … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,21,22,20,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","category-fish","category-sandy-lake","category-water-quality","category-watershed"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6582"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6652,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6582\/revisions\/6652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versicolor.ca\/sandylakebedford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}