SCALE, or the Survey of Climate and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems, represents an unprecedented effort to catalog, monitor, and understand the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of lakes throughout the Adirondack State Park in New York State.
In the mid 1980’s researchers conducted a survey of nearly 1,500 Adirondack lakes to understand the effects of acid rain. That survey revealed widespread and often severe acidification. Many Adirondack lakes were fishless. Findings from the 1980s survey highlighted the need for environmental protection.
The passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and subsequent monitoring has shown that Adirondack lakes are slowly recovering from acid rain. This is an environmental success story. However, as lakes recover from acid rain new environmental changes threaten water quality, fisheries, and other important attributes of lakes. A new survey to understand conditions throughout the Adirondacks is urgently needed. SCALE will provide data to understand and protect New York’s Adirondack lakes.
SCALE will guide science-based management of Adirondack lakes for decades to come. SCALE represents a systematic assessment to measure impacts on lake habitat quality, sensitive species, greenhouse gases, and harmful algal blooms. These threats constitute existential challenges to the long-term health of New York’s waters, yet each is amenable to adaptive management that can minimize impact when informed by strong data.
SCALE field work is underway. SCALE builds on the legacy of long-term Adirondack lake monitoring while leveraging the latest technological advances. Newly available methods offer insightful complements to traditional manual survey techniques, requiring fewer survey sites while enhancing understanding of the major drivers of changes across the Adirondacks through time. If you’re in the Adirondacks you may see our field teams out and about sampling lakes and collecting data. Over the course of multiple years our field teams plan to visit 250 or more lakes.