Great American Secchi Dip-In
A Report to the Volunteers
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The
1998
Great American Secchi Dip-In |
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A Report to the Volunteers |
The Dip-In Goes International in Its Fifth Year!
The year 1998 was the fifth year of the Secchi Dip-In. The project, sponsored by the US EPA's Office of Water's Clean Lakes Program and the North American Lake Management Society invites all volunteers on streams, rivers and estuaries, as well as lakes and reservoirs that use a Secchi disk, to provide a snapshot of transparency.
This year Canada became a full participant in the Dip-In. This was a major milestone because it recognizes that the value of volunteer monitoring crosses national borders.
Volunteers and Program Numbers Up
The total number of participants jumped dramatically to more than 2,600 in 1998, while the number of participating programs increased to 109 (Figure 1) also. These gains were not only the result of the addition of Canada, but U.S. participation increased as well.
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| Figure 1. The number of participants and participating programs in the Dip-In since 1994 | |
Since 1994, more than 4,300 different sites have been sampled by almost 4,000 volunteers. Many of these volunteers have contributed each year of the Dip-In, providing us with information on year-to-year variation and trends at these sites. We can only say "Thanks" for your assistance. As we have often said, the transparency data are important to us. The Dip-In is a serious attempt to demonstrate that volunteers can gather scientifically relevant data over large regions of the continent.
Mapping the Data
The importance of the data you have gathered can be seen in the accompanying map (Figure 2). As far as we know, this is the first attempt at a North American map of transparency, and it was done entirely with data gathered by volunteers!
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Figure 2. A map of the average Secchi disk transparency in counties which had lakes sampled by Dip-In volunteers. Because the intent of the map is to illustrate the distribution of volunteer participation, the color in a county may be represented by a single lake. Any interpretation that the average transparency of all the lakes in the county are represented by that color is not necessarily correct. Click image for larger view (319 K) |
Look at the map closely and you can see the very sharp boundary between the upper, clearer lakes in Canada and the upper U.S. states and the less transparent states of the Midwest. This demarcation is probably the boundary of intensive agriculture.
You can almost make out a second series of high transparency lakes that appear to follow the Appalachian chain down the East Coast into South Carolina and Georgia. Some of these lakes lie in regions that are now undergoing extensive development. Volunteers there are working hard to monitor any changes in water quality.
The blank spaces on the map also indicate that the Dip-In has a long way to go to identify and recruit volunteers in large regions of the country. In many cases there are no volunteer monitors in these regions, in other cases, sites where a Secchi disk can be used do not exist.
As the disclaimer on the map says, the map itself has to be viewed with caution. We have tried various mapping techniques, each of which was found to have advantages and disadvantages. When we used colored dots, we found that dots could cover up others, thus masking the variety of transparency in an area. In the current map, the data are summarized by county. The technique use has the advantage that there is no overlap of dots, but, the entire county is colored in, no matter how may lakes may be represented. This becomes a major problem in large counties such as those in the West and in Canada, where few sites are sampled.
Since the data can only reflect monitored lakes, the transparency color of a county may not represent the average color of the water in the county, but the transparency of the lakes selected by participating volunteers.
Click here if you would like to see the 1998 Secchi Dip-In results by State and Program.
Coming Soon: Nutrient Criteria
Have you heard about the Clean Water Action Plan, announced by President Clinton and Vice President Gore in February 1998? The Plan will have significant impacts on the quality of U.S. waters.
One of the important items in the Plan is the mandate that every State and Tribe must establish maximum levels of plant nutrients allowed in their waters. For the citizens of the U.S., this means that it will be much easier to engage the state government in the protection of existing water quality and the restoration of degraded sites.
The U.S. EPA is presently working on nutrient guidance manuals for lakes, rivers and streams, estuaries, and wetlands. These manuals will be used by the states in establishing the nutrient criteria. The data gathered by Dip-In volunteers was used in the discussions concerning regional attitudes about water quality.
As these criteria are established in your state, volunteer monitors can and should have an impact on the nature of the criteria. You, because of your monitoring efforts, may know more about your site than perhaps anyone else in the world. Only you can make sure that your voice is heard and your expertise used. Only you can make sure continued monitoring, especially by volunteers, is considered.
You can learn more about the Clean Water Action Plan on the Web at www.cleanwater.gov
Have You Visited Our Website Lately?
The Dip-In has moved its pages to a new address. Please change your address book to http://dipin.kent.edu.
While you are at our site, please feel free to look around.
Over the next year we will be adding new pages on volunteer methods that you can use in your monitoring. If all goes well, we will provide access to all of the Dip-In data that has been collected at any site.
For More Information...
The North American Lake Management Society (NALMS) is dedicated to the protection and restoration of lakes. They have a number of publications available, including manuals on how to monitor and restore lakes. For more information, contact them at 608-233-2836 or view their Website at www.nalms.org.
Many states have local NALMS chapters which have newsletters and annual meetings where you can ask questions of the experts. Contact NALMS for the address of your state's chapter or find the addresses at the NALMS website.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water encourages all citizens to learn about their water resources. It supports volunteer monitoring as a way to build awareness of water issues, train citizens in pollution prevention, provide data for otherwise unassessed waters and increase the amount of water quality information available to decision-makers at all levels of government.
The EPA supports volunteer monitoring through national and regional conferences, a national newsletter for volunteer monitors, a directory of volunteer monitoring programs, guidance on volunteer monitoring methods and quality assurance issues, technical assistance, and special events such as the Great American Secchi Dip-In. Visit the EPA's page at: www.epa.gov/OWOW/monitoring.
The EPA also provides support to address lake water quality issues including continuing to manage existing section 314 Clean Lakes Program projects, encouraging the use of the section 319 Nonpoint Source Program for lake projects, and supporting a variety of lake projects, such as the Dip-In. For more information on the EPA's lakes activities, visit the EPA's Clean Lakes page at: www.epa.gov/OWOW/lakes/lakes.html.
One of the most exciting sites on the Web is the Surf Your Watershed site, sponsored by the U.S. EPA (www.epa.gov/OWOW/surf). Use it to obtain and share important information about water quality and partnerships in your own watershed.
The Great American Secchi Dip-In staff would enjoy hearing from you. We would like to know about your own experiences with the Dip-In. If you have questions or comments, please write, FAX (330-672-3713), or telephone (330-672-3849).
If you haven't participated before, why not participate next year? You can participate with 2,000 other volunteers in an international monitoring effort. You can also advertise your own monitoring efforts. Why not let everyone else know how important your efforts are to the protection of your water body?
For more information on the Great American Secchi Dip-In, contact Bob Carlson at: dipin@kent.edu or write
Great American Secchi Dip-InUpdated: June 19, 2006