As you know, we had a a bit of a false start to the ice-in this year, and then finally settled on a date of Jan 18. Subsequent to that decision, a few days later, there were a couple of reports of possible open water on the main lake. It is uncertain whether this was water over ice or an actual open ice sighting. There is a good chance it was open water, as the temperatures had risen above freezing.
Anyway, we will stick with the Jan 18 date, and consider this second report an anomaly, or perhaps our first multiple freeze event.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Great Lakes look at percent ice cover, and then capture the date that this percentage is the highest for the year. This then gets tracked year over year. As of January 30, they were reporting only an 8% coverage compared to a yearly average of 30% at this point in the winter. https://glicetracker.github.io/
The very interesting thing about this graph is that the coverage this year has actually declined from a peak of 18% on January 22! So, our experience with decreasing ice at least is tracking what is happening elsewhere.
I realize that I had never updated the Hummingbird departure dates as recorded by Cathy Burgess. (16 Sept 2023)
The updated graph can be found in this section of the web site: Basically the birds arrive around May 8 and depart around Sept 16. The trendline indicates that the birds are leaving about 8 days later in 2023 than they did in 1986.
I wonder if anyone can tell us which plants can be found in Chandos?
It might be an interesting exercise to have a “Plant Species Count Weekend” sometime in the summer.
Here are a few snippets, randomly chosen:
–Water Soldier, an emergent plant, is on the Invasive Species watchlist.
–Green Algae and Bluegreen Algae. Did you know that Bluegreen algae is a bacteria, not a plant?
–Bladderwort, a submersed plant, is one of only a few carnivorous aquatic plants. It has small sacs that trap tiny aquatic animals. It is an indicator of lake health because it has low tolerance to pollution. (as are several others)
–Starry Stonewort, a submersible that is on the Invasive Species Watchlist.
Ed. note: The word “Starry”, reminds me of Don McLean’s song about Vincent Van Gogh “Starry Starry Night.
(“Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you”)
I recently received a notice of an upcoming seminar on November 4 to be hosted by the Federation of Cottage Associations, of which the CLPOA is a member.
What excited me about it is that the featured speaker is Dr John Smol, who in my humble opinion, is an absolute god when it comes to researching Ontario lakes, Who else has come close to his research and publication production, with 24 books and 700 papers bearing his name?
Quoting from Wikipedia,
John P. Smol, OCFRSFRSC[2] is a Canadian ecologist, limnologist and paleolimnologist who is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Biology[3] at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, where he also held the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change for the maximum of three 7-year terms (2001–2021).[4] He founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL).
The author or editor of 24 books and over 700 journal publications and book chapters,[1][10] Smol is an international lecturer and media commentator on a variety of topics, but most dealing with environmental issues. From 1987 to 2007, he edited the Journal of Paleolimnology.[11] Since 2004, he has been editor of the journal Environmental Reviews.[12] He is the series editor of the Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research[13] book series. He held the Chair of the International Paleolimnology Association [14] for two three-year terms ending in August 2018, and until recently was President (2019–2022) of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada.
The cost to register for this Webinar is $40. There are other speakers, along with Dr Smol. More info on them and the program can be found here.
I was thinking about going out on Halloween as some sort of diatom, but a blob of blue-green algae might be an easier costume to make, and would require less explaining! Happy fall everyone.
Debra Anthony recently sent out a link to the Muskoka link report card: It is only a summary report, the in-depth data is to come later. However it is very interesting in its own right and I would just like to make some comments vis a vis Chandos.
(Previous Muskoka Report Cards can be found here.)
Firstly, lake Muskoka is a huge lake. In terms of water volume, it is a good 8-10 times larger than Chandos, and on average is about 5 metres deeper.
Days of Ice Cover
The depth and the amount of water in Lake Muskoka mean that it will take longer to freeze and longer to thaw. They note that since 1975 the ice cover duration has decreased by about 20 days, (slope of approx 4 days per decade.)
Below is the Chandos Ice Cover data going back to 1986. Our ice cover loss on a straight line basis is about 3 days per decade.
In comparing the shape of the two graphs, they seem to be reasonably correlated, likely indicating that they are subject to near similar weather regimes.
What has been happening on some other lakes as a result of climate warming is that they are now experiencing multiple freeze/thaw cycles in a single winter. This is something we definitely hope not to see here, but it may be in our future.
Reduced Calcium Concentrations
Calcium levels in Ontario Lakes have been in decline for awhile. In the Muskokas there are low levels of Calcium in the water, and this is a cause for alarm as different organisms need calcium for bones, shells, etc. In Chandos, however, we have loads of Calcium, with concentrations probably 5 times that of the Muskokas, so we do not have a similar calcium problem. My own suspicion is that the calcium levels in the lakes have declined since we cleaned up the acid rain problem, as the acid would attack the rocks and limestone increasing the calcium in the runoff. There is complex chemistry in the calcium cycle and changes in pH and carbon dioxide levels both affect the cycle. Please note, however, I have not researched this in any depth and am not a chemist.
To read more, see the section at Chandossier.com under the Geology tab.
Saltier Waters, (Chlorides)
Muskoka is noticing an increase in chlorides in the lakes. Most likely this is due to road salt and runoff. At Chandos, we have a significantly smaller watershed, with, I suspect, fewer roads requiring salt. The 2014 Paleo study at Chandos did report increased Sodium Chloride in Gilmour Bay. This may be due to extra road salt being applied on the hills that run quite close to the Bay in a few spots.
Modern limnology revealed that the hypolimnion of Gilmour Bay is more anoxic than South Bay and as a result had elevated levels of nutrients (N and P). Although the late summer anoxia may be a chronic condition, it is likely acerbated by the recently elevated levels of ions related to road salt use (NaCl; a deicing agent on Canadian highways). This anthropogenic salt addition would increase the density of bottom waters and increase stratification, thereby reducing mixing and oxygen in the deep waters. This results in an increase in nutrient concentration in the hypolimnion, leading to a greater pulse of nutrients released from the hypolimnion to the epilimnion during fall overturn. This can lead to greater algal production at overturn.
Increase in Algal Blooms
Harmful agal blooms are on the increase and scientists don’t know why.
To learn more, look at this recent paper on the subject:
No doubt everyone is very aware of the wild fire catastrophes occurring across the nation this spring, well ahead of “fire season”.
Personally, I think that besides preserving the water quality of our lake and lake safety, wild fire preparedness should be one of the most important mandates of our lake association.
The recent fire at Jack Lake speaks well to this issue. JLA have water pumps at key locations around their lake, with people apparently who know how to use them.. I don’t think that Chandos does, but I believe we might have had many years ago. Please see the recent FB page posts on the Jack lake fire at the JLA FB site
It is amazing how fast the lake comes to life as soon as the ice goes out!
This spring the “official” ice-out date is April 16. Updated historical graphs can be found on the web-site. Over the last 35 years, on a trendline basis, the ice cover duration has reduced by about 11 days..
Unfortunately, I have not been able to keep as close an eye on the levels this spring. and wonder if Flat Creek ever went into reversal, as it sometimes does. I have a permanent stick gauge in South Bay that I use to track the levels – pretty primitive but it works great if I am around. Maybe I need to gets something that continuously monitors and that can be wifi’d. I’ll have to look for something.
The 2022 IsampleON eDNA report has just been released and can be found on the website. . Using DNA from water samples it looks for invasive species, notably mussels and spiny waterflea. So far, fortunately, nothing has been detected on our lake..
Please note that there is a loon webinar on Wednesday evening… details can be found on the FB website or go to:
Back in 2019, an MSc research project funded by the CLPOA, Western University, and MITACS was undertaken by David Zilkey on the changing condition of Gilmour Bay since the arrival in the area of European settlers. Regrettably, Covid played havoc with getting this work completed in a timely fashion, but now a “Plain Language” advance summary of the aquatic plant portion of his report can be found here. A more comprehensive report will be forthcoming.
A unique goal of David’s research was to see if paleolimnology techniques could be used to determine how nearshore aquatic plants have changed over time and in particular to see if there is a way to track the timing of the arrival and spread of invasive aquatic plants (eg Milfoil). (The short answer is “maybe”, but will require future work.)
An intriguing aspect of the field work was the collection of an exceptionally long (6 m) sediment core using the lake ice as a platform. This core would include material laid down since the time of the glacier retreat over 10,000 years ago. Only the top 0.75 m were needed for this particular study; the remaining 5.25 m are being preserved at the LARS lab at Western for potential future research.
David’s project is one of three completed by Western University Scientists on our lake over the last few years. We are very fortunate to have qualified scientists looking at the condition of our lake. Not only does it help us better understand what is going on, it also establishes a knowledge base upon which future researchers might build.
Chandos Lake Science 2 