Oathill Lake Conservation Society Water Monitoring

The Oathill Lake Conservation Society is a group of concerned neighbours of Oathill Lake, a small urban lake in Dartmouth Nova Scotia. It started when changes were noticed in the lake ecosystems, including increased fish stocking and fishing activities, loss of amphibian populations, and erosion of the lake shore. A measurement program was started to provide baseline depth profiles of oxygen, temperature, salinity/conductivity and pH, and was followed by by-weekly (during open water periods) sampling to track the effects of a number of changes in the lake environment intended to correct the problems noted, as well as the impacts of natural and other man-made events and activities on the lake habitat. Depth profiles are collected at 3 fixed locations in the lake, and, on a less-regular basis, at four of the more significant storm sewer drains into the lake. Other data are collected from long-duration data loggers (e.g., temperature-depth profiles at the deepest part of the lake, and winter temperature and conductivity in the main in-flow channel) and physical samples collected for laboratory analysis of nutrients and minerals.

Citation

Oathill Lake Conservation Society. (2019). Oathill Lake Conservation Society Water Monitoring. (dataset). Accessed from Atlantic DataStream

Data Collection Information

A YSI probe (ProPlus) is used to collect temperature, oxygen concentrations, conductivity/salinity and pH in depth profiles (at three fixed locations in the lake, at depths of 0.3 m, 1 m, then at 1 m intervals to the lake bottom, which ranges from about 4 m at the shallowest site to 8.5 m at the deepest part of the lake), and at 4 in-flow pipes into the lake. Samples are collected bi-weekly during the main vegetation growing season, and sporadically at other times of the year, including through-ice measurements. Secchi disc measurements are also made during open-water measurement runs. Calibration and operating procedures for the YSI probe follow the guidelines established by the CURA-H2O program formerly run by St. Mary's University, Halifax, which are, in turn, based on the procedures recommended by the manufacturer. Once or twice a year, surface and deep (~ 8 m) water samples are collected and sent to a commercial laboratory for analysis of nutrients and metals. Long-duration data loggers borrowed from Nova Scotia Adopt-A-Stream are used to track the temperature profile at the deepest part of the lake during the growing season, and, occasionally, to track conductivity over-winter in the main storm sewer feeding the lake.

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API Access

curl -G https://api.datastream.org/v1/odata/v4/Records --data-urlencode "\\$filter=DOI eq '10.25976/wtt6-6k82'" -H "x-api-key: PRIVATE-API-KEY"

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