Lake Tahoe is located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the northeastern part of California, boarding Nevada. It is well known as a tourist attraction for its great depth and clear cobalt blue waters located at high elevation. The combination of its depth, low ratio of watersheds to lake surface area, and its granite rock geology has lead to the creation of a low fertile and high transparent monomictic lake. Its also unique in that it doesn’t fully mix from top to bottom every year, lake many other lakes (Swift et al., 2005). With Lake Tahoe’s naturally low activity levels and higher clarity levels, when Secchi disc depths are taken the readings will show higher values as it is easier to see deeper into the water when there aren’t many
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Since optical water clarity is the first means by which common people and researchers make their judgements on water quality, it is very important that it always be analyzed. As a result, Lake Tahoe’s clarity has frequently been observed and checked, for annual and seasonal changes. The Secchi depth is measured by lowering a roughly 25 cm wide matte white disc plate (the color and size of the disc can vary between studies), into the waters off of the shaded side of the boat. The depth at which the disc disappears when going down, and the depth at which it reappears when coming back up are taken, and the average of these two values is recorded as the final Secchi disc depth. In Lake Tahoe, about every 12 days since 1967, the Secchi depths have been collected midday; since it is an unusually clear lake and it is easily affected by changes in water particles (Jassby et al., …show more content…
By diverging the sewage away from Lake Washington, the lake was able to cut back on its dominant limiting nutrient: phosphorus. As the unbalanced nutrient input levels decreased, phosphorus and nitrogen were able to reach relatively healthy levels, and quickly improvements in the lake's water clarity levels went from 1 meter to 2.8 meters in just six years (Edmondson,
Since optical water clarity is the first means by which common people and researchers make their judgements on water quality, it is very important that it always be analyzed. As a result, Lake Tahoe’s clarity has frequently been observed and checked, for annual and seasonal changes. The Secchi depth is measured by lowering a roughly 25 cm wide matte white disc plate (the color and size of the disc can vary between studies), into the waters off of the shaded side of the boat. The depth at which the disc disappears when going down, and the depth at which it reappears when coming back up are taken, and the average of these two values is recorded as the final Secchi disc depth. In Lake Tahoe, about every 12 days since 1967, the Secchi depths have been collected midday; since it is an unusually clear lake and it is easily affected by changes in water particles (Jassby et al., …show more content…
By diverging the sewage away from Lake Washington, the lake was able to cut back on its dominant limiting nutrient: phosphorus. As the unbalanced nutrient input levels decreased, phosphorus and nitrogen were able to reach relatively healthy levels, and quickly improvements in the lake's water clarity levels went from 1 meter to 2.8 meters in just six years (Edmondson,