SLICE: Description of the program

Bearhead LakePurpose of SLICE:

To monitor and model Minnesota lake ecosystems for the detection and better understanding of the effects of environmental stressors in order to guide management that sustains fisheries and water resources for future generations.

Long-term goals:

  1. Promote sustainable lake management through timely exchange of information about changes to lake conditions, potential causes for those changes, and possible adaptive management approaches.
  2. Improve public understanding of lake habitats, environmental stressors, and responses to stressors to aid in building stronger conservation partnerships that will lead to improved fishing, water quality and fish habitat.
  3. Report on the physical, chemical, and biological condition of Minnesota lakes based on monitoring of key status indicators in representative systems.
  4. Assemble relevant climate, land cover, hydrologic, and exploitation stressor data sets and evaluate potential causes of changes in lake condition.
  5. Develop models to understand current conditions and predict future responses of Minnesota lakes to environmental stressors.
  6. Evaluate the effectiveness of various Best Management Practices (BMPs) designed to restore or protect the quality of Minnesota"s lake resources.
  7. Attract interdisciplinary partnerships and leverage in-kind resources to advance mutually shared interests in sustaining lake resources and their fisheries.
  8. Seek efficiencies with lake monitoring efforts being conducted by other programs/agencies and continually improve data and information exchange.
  9. Review the SLICE program periodically to ensure ongoing relevancy while maintaining the integrity and continuity of important historical datasets.

Approach:

  • Phase 1 project in 24 sentinel lakes (2008 – 2012)
  • Measurement of a host of watershed, water quality, zooplankton, aquatic plant, and fish indicators
  • Evaluation of metrics that are the most relevant and sensitive indicators of the status of lake habitats and fish communities
  • Propose indicators and monitoring schedules in sentinel lakes and additional random lakes that cover larger numbers of lakes across broader geographic areas.
    • The focus of sentinel lake monitoring will be intensive and focused on better understanding cause effect relationships between stressors and lake status indicators, predictive modeling, and early detection of problems.
    • The focus of random lake monitoring will be extensive; monitoring fewer indicators less often, and designed to cover a wider range of lake systems. This component assesses the geographic scale of trends and provides an important "cross-check" of patterns observed in the sentinel lakes.
    • Combining both intensive and extensive approaches is a powerful and novel approach towards assessing status and trends in lake habitats and communities

Partners

Outcomes

  • 24 Lake Assessment Reports This link leads to an external site.
  • Monitoring schedules and models that will facilitate early detection of potential impairments to lake habitats and fish communities.
  • Identifying and focusing future monitoring activities on a set of habitat and fish indicators that change predictably as lakes become more nutrient-rich and warmer, yet are relatively stable under normal conditions.
  • Many contributing research explorations

Expected Benefits

  1. Cause-effect understanding of how stressors on the landscape and climate affect habitat and fish communities, in addition to any time-lags associated with these effects.
  2. Through statistical forecasting models, indicator and stressor data will be used to model risks of impairments to habitat and fish communities. Or, assessing the probability of gains to habitat with various remedial management actions or “best management practices”. Ongoing monitoring can validate and improve these statistical models.
  3. The collaborative sampling approach of SLICE will lead to efficiency and data sharing among partners.
  4. Outside researchers will benefit from access to comprehensive high quality "free" data. In turn, managers, policy makers, and other partners may benefit greatly from analyses performed by outside researchers on raw datasets. These partnerships may bring in additional matching grants from outside sources such as the National Science Foundation.
  5. Six lakes are currently listed under the Clean Water Act on the State of Minnesota"s impaired waters list This link leads to an external site.for excessive nutrients. Based on current nutrient levels, several additional sentinel lakes may become listed in the future. Long-term monitoring of the outcomes of federally mandated Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) that are or will be developed for impaired sentinel lakes will measure whether TMDL policies are successful in restoring these lakes to unimpaired conditions.
  6. Outcomes and technical tools developed should inform priority areas of conservation and restoration funding through fish habitat partnerships that are part of the National Fish Habitat Initiative This link leads to an external site.; specifically, the Midwest Glacial Lakes Partnership This link leads to an external site.); and other protection and restoration grant programs such as the DNR"s Shoreland Habitat Program and Conservation Partners Grant Program.
  7. The ultimate benefit of SLICE is a more effective, better coordinated lake protection program based on strong science.