Great Lakes Local Action Fund Project

The Great Lakes Local Action Fund project will serve to enhance nearshore water quality and aquatic plant management in the Kawartha Lakes, Lake Ontario Drainage Basin.

The objectives of the Project are to:

• Engage community members in protecting and improving lakes and rivers by creating and training a network of Citizen Scientists to monitor water quality and invasive aquatic plant conditions along waterfront properties;

• Improve nearshore water quality and/or aquatic plants by implementing improvements in six nearshore areas identified as having degraded water quality or invasive aquatic plants;

• Strengthen relationships among waterfront property owners, local community groups, universities, and water management organizations for the purpose of improving the health of nearshore areas; and

• Evaluate an emerging technology as a cost-effective approach for use by waterfront property owners to control nuisance aquatic invasive plant populations.

Project collaborators include: Kawartha Conservation, Ontario Tech University, Kawartha Lake Stewards Association, Scugog Lake Stewards Association, Carleton University, and the Finger Lakes Institute.

A Key aspect of the initiative will have community members working with academia and local water resource managers to track water quality and aquatic plant conditions adjacent to community members’ shoreline properties. Monitoring data will be used by water resource managers to recommend cost-effective improvements to nearshore areas that community members can implement at their shoreline properties.

Another key aspect of the initiative will test the efficacy of an emerging technology (commonly referred to as ‘bubblers’ or ‘aquatic thrusters’) to control invasive aquatic plants. This approach could be a cost-effective method of controlling invasive aquatic plants, however their environmental impacts have not been well studied.

To fill these gaps, we will be studying the physical, chemical, and biological related changes caused by their use in nearshore waters at 3 locations (Balsam Lake, Sturgeon Lake, Lake Scugog).

_{This project has received funding from the Province of Ontario. The views expressed by the Kawartha Region Conservation Authority do not  necessarily reflect those of the Province.}