Lake of the Woods, ON
The overall objective of this project is to quantify nutrient loading to the Lake of the Woods (LOW) from the Canadian portion of the basin. The LOW is a large, international water body straddling the borders of Ontario and Manitoba and the state of Minnesota. The LOW regularly experiences large and persistent algal blooms, and there is a need to better quantify the contribution of nutrients from tributary runoff and atmospheric deposition within the Ontario portion of the basin, which represents the largest part of the watershed. With funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) we have been monitoring tributary water quality and quantity and atmospheric deposition at several stations within the basin (see Figure 1). Click the box below to view a recent presentation (March 2024) on this project:
Project members: Catherine Eimers (PI), Andy Williams (field lead and MSc. candidate)
Past members: Kelly MacGillivray (MSc.), Wes Greenwood (MSc.; project collaborator)
Location of the Lake-of-the-Woods (LOW) nutrient loading study sites in northwestern Ontario. The portion of the LOW watershed falling within Ontario is outlined in black and lands belonging to the United States are indicated by dark grey
ISCO auto water sampler
Deposition collector
Acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) Flow meter
Stream gauging on the Pickerel River
Sampling through the ice
Stream sampling
Andy Williams, B.Sc. LoW Field Lead; MSc. candidate
Andy completed his B.Sc. in Environmental Science at Trent and began his M.Sc. in Sept 2020. His MSc. research will quantity phosphorus and nitrogen inputs to the LoW from tributaries and atmospheric deposition. Andy is using a combination of routine grab sampling, ISCO samplers and volunteer lay samplers to collect stream water at 10 tributaries across the watershed. Bulk deposition is also monitored at several stations throughout the year.
This project was undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada through the federal Department of Environment and Climate Change.
Ce projet a été realisé avec l'appui financier du gouvernement du Canada agissant par l'entremise due ministére fédéral de l'Environment et due Changment climatique
The Dorset Environmental Science Centre