Lake O. Will it go by the way of lake michigan

[schreckstoff]

This is one of the best figures I know of for illustrating Great Lakes phosphorus trends. It’s from a paper by Dove and Chapra published in 2015, freely available, link below. When my colleagues say “oh no preyfish are declining in all Great Lakes” I point to this figure and reply, “Yes they have to be”!

 

 

Figure Caption: Trends of open lake, spring (April–May) total phosphorus (TP) concentrations (μg P/L) for the Great Lakes. The existing GLWQA TP target concentrations are shown as the horizontal dashed lines. The additional data points (circles) for Lake Michigan prior to 1983 are taken from Chapra and Dobson (1981), Scavia et al. (1986), and Lesht et al. (1991).

 

The whole paper can be read here:

https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lno.10055

 

Great discussion 

 

[HBC]

Not sure if I completely agree with the above statement regarding preyfish trends relative to phosphorous levels.  Lake O has been fairly stable over the past 2 decades as per the graph.  There is no point in looking at pre-1998 data as that was pre-zebra and quagga infestation.  The lake cleared up significantly at that time and fishing was still excellent in the early 2000's.

[Wentworth6]

So wil,the lake clean up even more as my friends said was what happened in Michigan the zebra and quagga did too good a job. Or as stated Erie gives lake o. Utrients to off set that.