Water Quality Frequently Asked Questions

 

These are common questions asked by members, often at the annual meeting, about water quality.  The water quality monitors have the opportunity to pose these questions to the VLAP biologists and their answers are summarized here.


  1. Question: There seem to be more lilly pads on the pond then there used to be. Why would this be and is this a bad thing? (question posed at the 2012 Annual Meeting)
  2. Answer:  The amount of lilly pads on a water body will fluctuate over time, to some degree.  The most likely things to cause a change in the amount of lilly pads are a change in lake level (more shallow areas will support more lilly pads), disturbance (such as motor boat activity), the dynamic between the algae and plant life in the pond.
  3. In general, a lake or pond tends to be algal or plant based and tends to stay one or the other. White Oak Pond is a plant based lake.  Algae generally get their nutrients from the water and plants generally get their nutrients from the lake or pond sediments.  Thus an increase in nutrients in the water would cause the pond to have an increase in algae.  In general, more lilly pads is not a bad thing. They can help shade out algae and reduce algal blooms.  Plants "can" add nutrients to the water but generally not enough quantity to change the dynamic of the plant/algae dynamic of the lake.
  4. Thus, some change in the amount of lilly pads would be expected based on various factors and is not a cause for concern.  A vast change in the amount of lilly pads or signs that the lake algal/plant dynamic is changing would be but this is not currentlly the case for White Oak Pond.