A publication of the North American Lake Management ... · winter squash. The mild temperatures and timely rains in Indiana this summer have nourished the most abundant gardens we’ve

LakeLineA publication of the North American Lake Management Society

NORTH AMERICAN LAKEMANAGEMENT SOCIETY1315 E. Tenth StreetBloomington, IN 47405-1701

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Terminal Lakes

Volume 34, No. 3 • Fall 2014

Fall 2014 / LAKELINE 1

Hosted by the Florida Lake Management Society An Affiliate of NALMS

NALMS and the Florida Lake Management Society invite you to join us for NALMS 2014 at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina in Tampa, Florida. NALMS 2014 offers an opportunity to explore old Florida habitats, springs, rivers and beaches. Florida is a world-class destination where visitors can enjoy the attractions as well as the arts, history and Hispanic culture of west central Florida and its sub-tropical splendor. Tampa provides an opportunity to bring together lake managers, regulators, educators, researchers, students and corporate partners from around the continent and the world to share the results of research and management, to exchange ideas and information, and to learn about advancements in technology, management, and knowledge.

Tampa, FloridaNovember 12 – 14, 2014

Tentative ScheduleNALMS Board of Directors Meeting

WorkshopsNALMS New Member ReceptionYbor City Mojito Mambo

Opening Plenary SessionTechnical and Poster SessionsExhibits OpenNALMS Membership MeetingExhibitors’ Reception

Clean Lakes ClassicTechnical and Poster SessionsExhibits OpenAwards Reception and Banquet

Technical and Poster SessionsExhibits Open

Monday, November 10

Tuesday, November 11

Wednesday, November 12

Thursday, November 13

Friday, November 14

2 Fall 2014 / LAKELINE

Technical Program

Workshops and Tours

The NALMS 2014 Program Committee is planning a top-notch array of presentations on diverse aspects of lakes, ponds, reservoirs, their watersheds, and their many users and inhabitants. Below is a sample of key topics, but please check the symposium website regularly for up-to-date program information.

Proposed Sessions• Springs and Coastal Rivers Assessment and Management• In-Lake Restoration and Management Techniques• Innovative Watershed Strategies For Nutrient Control• National and Regional Lake Assessment• Lake Management Case Studies• Sustainability of Water Supply and Lakes• Harmful Algal Blooms• Invasive Species Management• Stormwater Management• Alum Treatment Technologies and Approaches• Fish and Wildlife Habitat Improvement• Large Lake Systems Management and Restoration• Aquatic Plant Ecology and Management• Data Management and Technologies• Managing Reservoirs for Riparian Habitats and Protected

Species• International Perspectives on Lake Management• Citizen Science and Monitoring

We will be offering a variety of full-day workshops and a field tour on Tuesday preceding the conference. These workshops provide attendees the opportunity for a more in-depth focus on a topic of interest, and many will provide hands-on experience.

Tuesday Workshops• Collection, Identification, Ecology and Control of Nuisance

Freshwater Algae• Internal Phosphorus Loading• Lake & Pond Phosphorus Inactivation & Interception

Tuesday Tour• Tour of Lake Apopka and World’s Largest Off-Line Alum

Treatment Project

Visit the NALMS website, www.nalms.org, for more information and pricing.

Symposium ThemeThe theme of NALMS’ 2014 International Symposium features both watershed and in-lake management and research efforts that can provide more near-term meaningful results. With seemingly endless water features and equally abundant water resource management challenges, Florida is uniquely positioned to host a discussion of these issues and to share national and international approaches and solutions.


Special Events

Important Deadlines

Contact Information

August 15, 2014Registration and payment from presenters of accepted abstracts due.

September 5, 2014Early bird registration deadline.

October 9, 2014Last day conference hotel rate available.

October 31, 2014Regular registration deadline.

Symposium Host Committee ChairMichael Perry | [email protected]

Symposium Program ChairSergio Duarte | [email protected]

Symposium Sponsorship/Exhibitor ChairBrian Catanzaro | [email protected]

General Conference, Exhibitor & Sponsorship InformationNALMS Office | 608-233-2836 | www.nalms.org

Ybor City Mojito Mamba

Tuesday, November 11 This year, our traditional symposium-eve social gathering will take us a short trolley ride from the hotel to Ybor City, a National Historic Landmark District which was established by cigar manufacturers and primarily inhabited by immigrants from Spain, Cuba, and Italy. In recent years portions of the neighborhood have been redeveloped into a night club and entertainment district.

Exhibitor Reception

Wednesday, November 12 NALMS, the Symposium Host Committee and our exhibitors invite you to join us in kicking off the symposium and welcoming attendees to Tampa. Take time to relax, view the poster displays and visit with the exhibitors and fellow attendees.

Clean Lakes Classic 5k Run/Walk

Thursday, November 13 The annual Clean Lakes Classic features a route just outside of the hotel along the bay. You need not be a runner to participate! All pre-registered participants receive a t-shirt as part of the sign-up fee.

NALMS Awards Reception & Banquet

Thursday, November 13 NALMS’ Annual Awards Reception & Banquet is the climax of the Society’s year as members and friends of the society are honored for their work and achievements over the last year. Awards are presented for Technical Merit, Outstanding Corporation (Jim Flynn Award) and Friends of NALMS and are capped off with our most prestigious award, the “Secchi Disk Award,” which honors the NALMS member who has made the most significant contributions to the goals and objectives of the Society.


Hotel and Transportation

Visit www.nalms.org to register for NALMS 2014!

NALMS and the symposium host committee welcome you to sunny Tampa, Florida! The Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel and Marina is a world-class hotel that overlooks Tampa Bay in the heart of Downtown Tampa. Nearby Ybor City, the Florida Aquarium, the Tampa Bay History Center and other attractions are within a short walk or can be reached by trolley making Tampa a perfect destination for work and play.

Hotel Information

Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina700 South Florida Avenue Tampa, Florida 813-221-4900 | tampawaterside.com

• Room rates are $129 for single occupancy plus tax.• Government rate rooms are available.• The conference rate is available until October 9, 2014

Transportation Information

Tampa International Airport is served by 19 airlines with daily direct flights from 75 destinations in the United States, Canada and beyond. The Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina does not offer an airport shuttle service, but is a short 15-20 minute ride via SuperShuttle.

We’ll see you in Tampa!

Photo CreditsPage 1: Experience Kissimmee (top), Alain (bottom)Page 2: Ken Wagner (left), Ricardo Mangual (right), Stefano (bottom)Page 3: Holmes Palacios (top left), Kim Hill (bottom left), Todd Tietjen (bottom right)Page 4: Dean Beyett (left), William Verbeek (right), Robert Du Bois (bottom)


Published quarterly by the North American Lake Management Society (NALMS) as a medium for exchange and communication among all those interested in lake management. Points of view expressed and products advertised herein do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of NALMS or its Affiliates. Mention of trade names and commercial products shall not constitute an endorsement of their use. All rights reserved. Standard postage is paid at Bloomington, IN and additional mailing offices.

NALMS OfficersPresident

Terry McNabb

Immediate Past-PresidentAnn Shortelle

President-ElectReed Green

SecretarySara PeelTreasurer

Michael Perry

NALMS Regional DirectorsRegion 1 Wendy GendronRegion 2 Chris MikolajczykRegion 3 Imad HannounRegion 4 Jason YarbroughRegion 5 Melissa ClarkRegion 6 Julie ChambersRegion 7 Jennifer GrahamRegion 8 Craig WolfRegion 9 Todd TietjenRegion 10 Frank WilhelmRegion 11 Anna DeSellasRegion 12 Ron ZurawellAt-Large Nicki BellezzaStudent At-Large Lindsey Witthaus

LakeLine StaffEditor: William W. Jones

Advertising Manager: Philip ForsbergProduction: Parchment Farm Productions

Printed by: Metropolitan Printing Service Inc.

ISSN 0734-7978 ©2014 North American

Lake Management Society4510 Regent Street

Suite 2AMadison, WI 53705

(All changes of address should go here.)Permission granted to reprint with credit.

Address all editorial inquiries to:William Jones

1305 East Richland DriveBloomington, IN 47408

Tel: 812/[email protected]

Address all advertising inquiries to:Philip Forsberg

NALMSPO Box 5443

Madison, WI 53705-0443Tel: 608/233-2836Fax: 608/233-3186

[email protected]

LakeLine

On the cover:Tufa towers in Mono Lake, California. Photo by David B. Herbst.

Advertisers Index

Aquarius Systems, Inc. 38Beagle Bioproducts 14Marrone Bio Innovations BCMedora Corporation 24PhycoTech 46Scientific Diving International 24SePRO IFCVertex Water Features 33

Contents Volume 34, No. 3 / Fall 2014

1 NALMS 2014 Symposium Information6 From the Editor 7 From the President

Terminal Lakes

8 Introducing Terminal Lakes 11 Walker Lake – Terminal Lake at the Brink 15 The Salton Sea; An Uncertain Future for California’s Largest Lake 21 Mono Lake: Streams taken and Given Back, But Still Waiting 25 More Than Meets the Eye: Managing Salinity in Great Salt Lake, Utah 30 Lake Abert, OR: A Terminal Lake Under Extreme Water Stress 34 Owens Lake – From Dustbowl to Mosaic of Salt Water Habitats 38 Lake Winnemucca and Pyramid: One Gone, One Saved

43 Student Corner 47 Affiliate & Other News48 Literature Search


FromBill Jones the Editor

Many quarts of blueberries and green beans have been frozen, the last of the tomatoes are

processing in the canner as I write this, and it looks to be a bumper crop of winter squash. The mild temperatures and timely rains in Indiana this summer have nourished the

most abundant gardens we’ve had in years. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case in all of North America. The Western drought and water rationing in California have been in the news all summer and appear to be the worst in memory. The extended drought provides a fitting backdrop for this issue of LakeLine, with the theme of “Terminal Lakes.” Kudos to Joe Eilers and Ron Larson who conceived the “Terminal Lakes” theme and solicited articles for this issue. Joe and Ron have written an excellent introduction to the theme articles of this issue so I will simply introduce the other articles here. Before I do, however, be certain to gaze long at the many spectacular images of terminal lakes contained in these articles. NALMS President Terry McNabb writes his final LakeLine message in this issue. Has it been a year already? In “Affiliate News” we hear from California and Washington. Zach Slagle writes about what makes a successful bass nest in this issue’s “Student Corner.” We close, as usual, with “Literature Search.” Remember to vote in this year’s NALMS elections. I look forward to seeing you all in Tampa! c

In MemoriamLowell Klessig

NALMS and lake management lost an important voice and cherished friend with the death of Lowell Klessig on August 8, 2014, following a courageous battle with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. He died at his beloved New Hopestead Farm in the Town of New Hope, WI, surrounded by family. Lowell’s doctoral dissertation served as the foundation for Wisconsin’s Inland Lake Management Law. He had a long career with the University of Wisconsin-Extension as a Lake District Specialist. He crisscrossed the state to help lake property owners and county boards develop stewardship plans and lake districts. He taught courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at UW-Stevens Point. While sharing beers with a group of colleagues following a day of presentations at the 1979 North American Lake Management Conference in East Lansing, MI, Lowell asked if anyone would be interested in working to create a professional lake management society. As a result of Lowell’s vision and leadership, and the steering committee he chaired, the North American Lake Management Society was born the following year at the 1980 International Symposium on Inland Waters and Lake Restoration in Portland, ME. Lowell served on the NALMS Board for six years. Lowell was a prolific writer. His essays on lake management, stewardship, conservation, and farming were infused with a commonsense and heartfelt philosophy. His 2010 article for LakeLine entitled, “A Tale of Two Spiritual Lakes” was particularly thought-provoking and all Lowell. A link to this article is on the NALMS webpage. On a personal note, Lowell was a teacher, mentor, colleague, and inspiration to this editor and to many, many others. He inspired many to not only better manage lakes and watersheds, but also to see the spiritual side of lakes. One of Lowell’s favorite quotations was from Sigurd Olson, who died in his small woodland cabin where the following page was found in his typewriter: “A NEW ADVENTURE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN. I KNOW IT IS GOING TO BE A GOOD ONE.”

Here’s wishing Lowell a good one, too.

~ Bill Jones


FromTerry McNabb the President

Well, that went by fast…by the time you read this I will have nearly finished a year as your

president and will be gearing up for the annual NALMS Symposium. This has been an exciting year as your fearless leader. I’m grateful for the opportunity to

serve NALMS and for the support of our Board of Directors and Executive Committee. They all do hard work to keep the Society moving forward. I also gained a special appreciation for the work of our two staff members, Greg and Phil. I have been involved in the leadership of another similar professional society that had no staff and I can tell you this makes a huge difference. This year they did double duty putting on the National Water Quality Monitoring Conference, which can be a bigger event than our meeting, and they are gearing up to get us into Tampa this November. They do excellent work. Other unsung heroes are: Jeff Schloss, who organizes our hotel and conference arrangements – that is a hard job and he does it well; Bill Jones, who makes sure we get LakeLine four times a year and it’s worth reading when you receive it; and Al Sosiak, who just took over the important job of editing our Journal. Probably the best part of this job was getting to know these people and appreciate their commitment. This has been an interesting year with respect to lake management. This month we saw the first major U.S. potable water utility shut down because of algal toxins present in delivered drinking water. As I am sure you have seen, the City of Toledo, OH, was forced to provide alternative

water sources to over 400,000 people for nearly a week because of Microcystin toxins present. If you had the chance to see the satellite image that Bluewater Satellite published this past April, you would have seen the scope of the impact of spring runoff on a lake the size of Lake Erie. It’s probable that this sediment load carried with it the nutrients necessary to help drive the square miles of toxic cyanobacteria blooms in this Great Lake that led to this problem for the residents of Northeastern Ohio. This same scenario can and probably does play out in many other areas where we work throughout North America. Our efforts become more important than ever as we are the collection of experts whose mission is to help understand and correct such impacts. This has been a very interesting year out West where I work. In the Pacific Northwest we are blessed with an abundance of water. Even too much at times. In California, however, we are seeing firsthand the impacts of the severe drought that is impacting the Southwestern U.S. We have clients that are trying to drill wells to maintain lake levels through accessing their water rights. We have seen cyanobacteria blooms in the main reservoirs at the end of the California Aqueduct that supplies 4 million people (and I got to help fix that) and we have seen a spike in the closures of beaches and lakes to recreation because of cyanobacteria blooms that had not been experienced in these systems before. Probably the most stunning sight to me was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles through the Central Valley of California, the breadbasket of our nation, and the place where most of our winter vegetables are grown. There were over 100 miles of dry and exposed farmland and empty irrigation delivery canals in

the southern portion of the valley. I drove by miles of citrus orchards that were dead with the trees being backhoed out of the ground and piled for disposal. Our expertise as managers of these critical water resources becomes more important every day and NALMS plays a key role in keeping us informed and involved. This issue of LakeLine focuses on lakes that are experiencing impacts because of a lack of available water. It should be a good read and I am looking forward to seeing it in the mailbox. So thanks again for a good year at the helm and I am looking forward to continuing to work with the Board for another year in an official capacity and staying involved in the years beyond.

Terry McNabb has been working in the field of lake and aquatic plant management for about 40 years and specializes in management of invasive aquatic species. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and works primarily in the Western United States. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his family. c

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Introducing Terminal Lakes

Joe Eilers and Ron Larson

Terminal Lakes

Study Lakes

Lakes tend to be among the more ephemeral features of the landscape and generally are formed and

disappear rapidly on a geological time frame. However, to see groups of lakes disappear within a lifetime is typically not a natural phenomenon. Here in Oregon, we’ve witnessed the desiccation of what was formerly a 16-mile-long lake in a little over a decade. Endorehic lakes, commonly referred to as terminal lakes because they lack an outlet, are among the most vulnerable of lakes to human intervention. Because terminal lakes are usually located in arid environments where water is extremely valuable, they are the first to lose among the competing forces for water. But that doesn’t have to be the case. In some respects, terminal lakes are far easier to restore than eutrophic/hypereutrophic systems. No expensive alum treatments, no dredging, no chemicals . . . just add water and life returns: but as those in West know, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” And fight we must. In this issue of LakeLine, we describe a series of terminal lakes in the western United States starting with the least saline lake among the group, Walker Lake, and ending with Lake Winnemucca, which was desiccated in the 20th century (Figure 1). Like all lakes, each of these has a unique story to relate with different chemistry and biota. The loss of Lake Winnemucca is an informative tale, but it is not necessarily the inevitable outcome for these western terminal lakes. There are successful templates, such as Pyramid and Mono lakes to serve as guides for how these lakes can be saved or restored. The key involves local effort to bring the problem to the attention of

a wider audience and reach a solution that ensures adequate water to save the resource. And what is there to save? These terminal lakes are among the most productive habitats on the continent, and are especially important to waterbirds, such as avocets, gulls, stilts, and various small shorebirds like phalaropes, during

migration when the birds replenish fat reserves. For waterbirds, many western terminal lakes provide food in the form of easily taken brine shrimp and alkali flies, both of which can be highly abundant. As a result, many western U.S. terminal lakes attract large numbers of shorebirds (Table 1). The Salton Sea and adjacent

Figure 1. Terminal lakes in the western United States described in this issue.


areas in southern California provides habitat for nearly 400 species of birds and is an important wintering site for some waterbirds. Lake Abert, a hypersaline lake in southern Oregon, hosted several hundred thousand Wilson’s phalaropes, a small migratory shorebird, until the salinity got too high for its primary food, brine shrimp, in August 2013. The Great Salt Lake, one of the world’s largest saline lakes, also supports an abundant bird population. Although fish are largely absent from the lake, the state of Utah derives millions of dollars in revenue annually from managing another type of “fishery” for brine shrimp cysts (eggs).

Lake Trajectories And what happens when we fail to protect these important lakes? The story of Lake Owens describes the costs to society when the inflow to a major terminal lake is diverted to Los Angeles, leaving behind a playa that is now the single largest source of air pollution (from particulates) in the United States. Mono Lake escaped a similar fate when a group of folks intervened and halted the City of Los Angeles from desiccating this lake. A similar approach was employed to slow the salinization of Walker Lake, NV. Lawsuits filed against the USEPA and the state of Nevada under the Clean Water Act forced the agencies to establish a TMDL for Walker Lake based on total dissolved solids (as a surrogate for salt). In both cases, the plaintiffs employed a powerful legal principle, the Public Trust Doctrine, which recognizes that government entities have a responsibility to protect resources

that belong to all of us (McClurg 2005). Expect to see this legal strategy applied in upcoming conflicts involving highly flawed western water laws and protection of terminal lakes. The current trajectory of saline lakes is largely toward desiccation (Figure 2). The combination of diversion of inflows and climate change presents two powerful forces that cause many terminal lakes to disappear. As shown in Figure 2, the longer the line and the steeper the slope the more likely the terminal lake will become a playa (dry lake bed). Even the very deep saline lakes are not immune (c.f. Walker Lake), but they do offer additional time to seek action and prevent loss.

Figure 2. Vector plot of the terminal study lakes showing changes in maximum depth and salinity. The circles denote historical conditions and the arrows represent current conditions. Mono Lake with the reversing arrow is the only one of the study lakes on a path to recovery, although Pyramid Lake has stabilized. The intersection of lakes Winnemucca, Owens, and Abert with the 1 on the Y axis represents slightly different conditions for each of these lakes. Lake Winnemucca is totally dry except for transient puddles left by rainstorms. Owens Lake is dry throughout much of its former lake bed, with shallow brine ponds covering part of the lake bed, and a small remnant freshwater pool on the west side of the lake. Lake Abert, as of this writing, is nearly desiccated, with a small pool of red brine in the deepest portion of the lake. The Great Salt Lake (GSL) has shown considerable fluctuations in the last 150 years, largely associated with wet and dry periods, but no discernible trends.

Table 1. Examples of Western U.S. Terminal Lakes that are Key Shorebird Sites

Site Approximate Peak Shorebird Numbers

in Thousands

Great Salt Lake, UT 250-1,000Lake Abert, OR 100-300Salton Sea, CA 100-250Lahontan Basin, NV 100-250Mono Lake, CA 50-100Goose Lake, CA & OR 30-50Summer Lake, OR 30-50Harney Basin Lakes, OR 30-50Klamath Basin Lakes, CA & OR 20-30

Source: Oring et al. 2009; www.ebird.org

A World-Wide Problem Although this issue of LakeLine presents selected lakes from the western United States (there are dozens of others that we couldn’t include in this issue), terminal lakes around the world are in jeopardy caused by diversions and changes in climate. One of the most visible and tragic cases of shrinking terminal lakes is the South Aral Sea, which is now only 25 percent of its former area. Urmia Lake, an enormous lake in Iran, is faced with similar problems, although efforts are underway to secure additional sources of freshwater for the basin (Zarghami 2011). Scores of terminal lakes in the interior of


Walker Lake – Terminal Lake at the Brink

David B. Herbst, R. Bruce Medhurst, Ian D. Bell, and Graham Chisholm

China have disappeared and others are receding rapidly (Liu et al. 2013). Africa and Australia are also experiencing accelerated desertification and loss of terminal lakes (Williams 2001). Lake Chad, once the fourth-largest lake in Africa, has shrunk so rapidly in the last several decades that it has been classified as an ecological catastrophe by the United Nations. Specialized biological communities that evolved with these water bodies are jeopardized as well. Enjoy these stories from the West and if you want to help protect or restore some of these resources, there are many avenues for you to participate, some of which are listed below.

Walker Lake.www.walkerlakenv.org

Salton Seawww.saltonsea.ca.gov/

Mono Lakewww.monolake.org

Great Salt Lakehttp://www.fogsl.org/

Lake Abertwww.lakeabert.org

Owens Lakehttp://www.ovcweb.org

Pyramid Lakehttp://www.pyrimidlake.us

Lake Winnemucca(no advocates)

For further reading (and movie) enjoyment about terminal lakes – and LA water) consider the following:

Chinatown. 1974. Movie starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Roman Polanski, director. Robert Towne, screenplay. Paramount Pictures.

Hammer, U.T. 1986. “Saline Lake Ecosystems of the World.” Monographiae Biologicae (Book 59), Dr. W. Junk Publishers. 632 pp.

Hoffman, A. 2014. Mono Lake: From Dead Sea to Environmental Treasure. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque.168 pp.

Melack, J.M., R. Jellison and D.B. Herbst (Eds). 2001. Saline Lakes. Developments in Hydrobiology 162. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Dordrecht. 347 pp.

Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. Revised Edition. Penguin Books, New York. 583 pp.

Stringfellow, K. 2011. Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005. Center for American Places, Incorporated and University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 152 pp.

ReferencesLiu, H., Y. Yin, S. Piao, F. Zhao,

M. Engelsand and P. Ciais. 2013. Disappearing lakes in semiarid northern China: drivers and environmental impact. Environ Sci & Technol, 47: 12107−12114.

McClurg, S. 2005. Remnants of the past: Management challenges of terminal lakes. Western Water, pp. 4-13.

Oring, L.W., L. Neel and K.E. Oring. 2009. Intermountain West Regional Shorebird Plan. Intermountain West Joint Venture. Missoula, Montana. 55 p.

Williams, W.D. 2001. Anthropogenic salinisation of inland waters. Hydrobiologia, 466:329-337.

Zarghami, M. 2011. Effective watershed management; Case study of Urmia Lake, Iran. Lake & Reserv Mgmt, 27:87-94.

Joe Eilers is a professional hydrologist and limnologist with MaxDepth Aquatics, Inc. in Bend, Oregon. He has been working on lakes in the western United States since 1986.

Ron Larson, a recently retired aquatic biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is striving to bring attention to the loss of key shorebird habitat at Lake Abert, Oregon (photo credit, Kathy Larson). c

North American Journal of Fisheries ManagementKirk, J.P., K.L. Manuel, K.L. and S.D. Lamprecht. 2014. Long-term population response of triploid grass carp stocked in Piedmont and Coastal Plain reservoirs to control hydrilla. N Amer J Fisheries Manage, 34(4): 795-801.

Policy Studies JournalKoontz, T.M. and J. Newig. 2014. From planning to implementation: top‐down and bottom‐up approaches for collaborative water management. Policy Studies J, 42(3): 416-442.

Society and Natural ResourcesHenareh Khalyani, A, A.L. Mayer and E.S. Norman. 2014. Water flows toward power: socioecological degradation of Lake Urmia, Iran. Society and Nat Resour, 27(7): 759-767.

Brownlee, M.T. J., J.C. Hallo, D.D. Moore, R.B. Powell and B.A. Wright. 2014. Attitudes toward Water Conservation: The Influence of Site-Specific Factors and Beliefs in Climate Change. Society and Nat Resour, 27(9): 964-982.

William (Bill) Jones is LakeLine’s editor and a former NALMS president, and clinical professor (retired) from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He can be reached at: 1305 East Richland Drive, Bloomington, IN 47408; e-mail: [email protected]. c

(LITERATURE SEARCH . . . continued from page 48)


Terminal Lakes

Walker Lake – Terminal Lake at the Brink

David B. Herbst, R. Bruce Medhurst, Ian D. Bell, and Graham Chisholm

Setting

Vast bodies of water have filled and ebbed in desert basins of North America as ice ages have come

and gone. Pluvial Lake Lahontan once covered much of the western Great Basin during periods of its most recent highest stand in lake level about 14,000 years ago (Figure 1). As Lahontan dried over the succeeding millennia it left behind two major lake remnants – Walker and Pyramid Lakes, both in western Nevada. Walker Lake is fed primarily by the Walker River, with its origins in the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada of California, entering at the northern end of the lake. To the west, the lake is bordered by the dry Wasuk Range, and geology of the watershed mixes volcanic and granitic rock types. As in other salt lakes of the western Great Basin, water chemistry is decidedly alkaline, a mix of carbonates, chloride, and sulfate salts of sodium at a pH near 10 and total dissolved solutes approaching 25 g/L (seawater is roughly 35 g/L, but mostly sodium and chloride with pH typically around 8). Walker Lake is monomictic, stratifying in spring and mixing in fall, with thermocline at a mean depth of about 10 m and maximum depth near 22 m, and a surface elevation of 1198 m (updated from Herbst et al. 2013a).

History of Native Fish Historical evidence gathered from lake-bottom sediment cores indicate that Walker Lake has become very shallow and possibly dried several times since becoming isolated from Lahontan. During these dry periods, which often lasted hundreds of years, native fish were able to find refuge in the Walker River until the lake refilled and salinities were suitable for them to return. Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawii,

Figure 1. Map of the extent of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan and Lake Russell showing locations of present-day remnants of Walker Lake and Mono Lake.

(LCT) were once distributed throughout Lake Lahontan, but with the drying and recession of Lake Lahontan in the late Pleistocene-early Holocene, the LCT became isolated within river systems ending in terminal lakes in northern Nevada, eastern California, and southern Oregon. During 9,000 to 11,000 years of isolation LCT have diverged into four

genetically distinct stocks (Peacock et al. 2010), all of which are obligate stream spawners. Those having access to lake habitats can live 5-14 years and can reach a size of 125 cm and 18 kg, making this iconic fish a prized catch that once gave Walker Lake renown as a popular recreational fishery that is now gone. Natural spawning runs of LCT began


to diminish in the mid-1800s with the development of agricultural diversion dams. Large-scale construction of dams after the turn of the century cut LCT off to all suitable spawning habitat in the upper river, so extirpating the Walker Lake strain of LCT, with the last natural spawning runs being documented in the 1950s. Since that time the Walker River has been stocked with out-of-basin strains of LCT whose origins share elevated salinity levels. LCT were listed as endangered in 1970, then reclassified as threatened in 1975. In modern times, upstream agricultural water diversions have resulted in a loss of river inflow, a vertical drop in lake level of over 150 feet, and an increase in salinity from 2.5 g/L to nearly 25 g/L at present (Figure 2). The increased salinity and loss of a river “escape route” for fish that led to the disappearance of LCT from Walker Lake now threatens the population of Tui chub as well. Salinity tolerance differs among the various strains of LCT, but acclimated and self-sustaining wild stocks suffer lethal effects of salinity at levels of 14-15.5 g/L (Sedinger et al. 2012).

Other Aquatic Life and Falling Lake Level In addition to the mix of native fish species, the open waters of the lake have been inhabited by zooplankton including several cladocerans, copepods, and rotifers, some of which have also

Figure 2. History of falling lake levels at Walker Lake.

disappeared with rising salinity (Beutel et al. 2001). At salinities somewhat reduced from present conditions, the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Nodularia spumigena was the dominant phytoplankton of the lake. Nodularia sometimes blooms to high densities and produces high oxygen demands as it dies and decomposes, along with other organic particulate matter in the hypolimnion of the stratified lake. This can also be accompanied by the generation of sometimes-toxic levels of ammonia. During summer warming of the epilimnion that reduces oxygen availability, the anoxia of the hypolimnion can combine to produce an oxygen deficit where fish are “squeezed” to a limited area of suitable habitat at mid-depths between these surface and bottom layers. The lake bottom environment consists of anoxic sediments below the thermocline, and littoral shallows of mixed rock, sand, and mud where aquatic insects and other invertebrates have been found in abundance (Herbst et al. 2013a). Extensive macrophyte beds of the widgeon grass Ruppia occur in summer in the littoral zone of the lake, densest between 2 to 7 m depth. Within these beds and on rocky substrates in more shallow water, the midge Cricotopus ornatus and damselfly predator Enallagma clausum have been most common in recent years. In deeper water of the littoral zone, the midge

Tanypus grodhausi, tolerant of oxygen-poor conditions, becomes dominant. Less abundant benthic invertebrates include the alkali fly Ephydra hians, the biting midge Culicoides, the small predatory diving beetle Hygrotus masculinus, and aquatic oligochaetes. Prior to salinities exceeding about 15 g/L, the amphipod Hyalella was the most abundant invertebrate of the littoral zone, but it too has since disappeared. Experiments exposing damselfly nymphs and midge larvae to varied salinities showed that survival was best at levels of salt concentration that occurred in the past, and the 72-hr LC50 for midges was 25 g/L, just slightly higher than present day salinity (Herbst et al. 2013b). Damselfly growth and feeding rates were significantly reduced between 20 and 30 g/L, and mortality of smaller nymphs showed these early instars even more vulnerable on average. These results suggest both that these insects were already stressed and anticipated the changes now occurring in population dynamics. In 2010, with lake level falling and salinity rising above 20 g/L, midge numbers were low in the fall cohort of that year and coming into the spring generation of 2011 (Figure 3). A deep snowpack and high stream runoff in 2011 resulted in rebounding numbers of the fall generation of midges and similar high recruitment into the 2012 population of damselflies. After this short respite of rising lake levels, prolonged drought conditions in 2012 and continuing into 2014 in the Sierra Nevada have restricted stream flows to less than half of the historic normal runoff. With upstream agricultural irrigation diversions, much less than this reached saline Walker Lake. After a record drought, lake levels continued to drop and salinity increased into ranges that are now threatening the populations of benthic invertebrates in the lake. As of summer 2013, the populations of previously dominant insects of the lake, the midge fly Cricotopus and damselfly Enallagma have crashed (Figure 3). These changes are continuing in 2014, with snowpack lagging behind even the drought of the previous two years. As these insect populations disappear at this salinity, there has been an ascendance of the more salt-tolerant alkali fly. This


Figure 3. Recent population dynamics of midges (Cricotopus), damselflies (Enallagma) and varied salinity in Walker Lake.

marks a transition in ecosystem structure that portends an altered food web (Figure 4), but also shows the conditions necessary for recovering the community that would exist at higher lake levels. As the insects of the lake have been in decline so have the Tui chub. Falling numbers of the remaining fish in the lake over the past several years have now been joined by losses in the fish-eating birds of the lake, notably pelicans and cormorants (Figure 5). While it is tempting to conclude from these developments that the Walker Lake ecosystem is a lost cause, the fact is the lake is recoverable. As observed here and at other lakes of varied salinity, invertebrates can recolonize quickly from refuges in seepage areas around the lake shores or by flight, and hatchery-raised LCT Figure 4. Abundance increase of the more salt-tolerant alkali fly (Ephydra) as salinity rises.

could be re-stocked given the return of river flows and reduced salinity.

Conservation Walker Lake has been the subject of considerable conservation focus, and terminal lakes in Nevada have benefited from being championed by U.S. Senator Harry Reid, who successfully passed the Desert Terminal Lake Act (P.L. 107-171). Since its original passage in 2002, Senator Reid has been able to amend the Act, including a provision in 2009 that establishes a Walker Basin Restoration Program administered and managed by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). Under the Program, NFWF has been actively acquiring water rights and engaged in revegetation of retired farmland associated with water sales, water conservation measures, and other efforts to protect water in stream for Walker Lake. By 2014, NFWF has acquired approx. 27,000 AF of surface water storage rights, and over 6,300 acres of land from willing sellers for approximately $45.1 million. NFWF has been working through the legal process to protect and transfer the water rights


Figure 5. Decreased numbers of fish-eating pelicans and cormorants at Walker Lake.

for in stream use to benefit Walker River and Walker Lake. An important victory occurred in March 2014 when the Nevada State Engineer approved NFWF’s initial application for transfer of approximately 2,200 AF of water rights. Before water from these water rights flows to the lake, the Federal Decree Court will review and rule on the proposed transfer. While a lengthy process remains to complete the objectives of the Program, Walker Lake is the beneficiary of an active water acquisition program that is hoped will provide secure and sustained water flows through the Walker River system for the future sustainability of the lake and ecosystem.

ReferencesBeutel, M.W., A.J. Horne, J.C. Roth and

N.J. Barratt. 2001. Limnological effects of anthropogenic desiccation of a large, saline lake, Walker Lake, Nevada. Hydrobiologia, 466:91-105.

Herbst, D.B., R.B. Medhurst, S.W. Roberts and R. Jellison. 2013a. Substratum associations and depth distribution of benthic invertebrates in saline Walker Lake, Nevada, USA. Hydrobiologia, 700:61-72.

Herbst, D.B., S.W. Roberts and R.B. Medhurst. 2013b. Defining salinity limits on the survival and growth of benthic insects for the conservation management of saline Walker Lake, Nevada, USA. J Insect Conservation, 17:877-883.

Peacock, M. M., M. L. Robinson, T. Walters, H. A. Mathewson and R. Perkins. 2010. The evolutionary significant unit concept and the role of translocated populations in preserving the genetic legacy of Lahontan cutthroat trout. Trans Am Fisheries Soc, 139:382–395.

Sedinger, J.S., E.J. Blomberg, A.W. VanDellen and S. Byers. 2012. Environmental and population strain

effects on survival of Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in Walker Lake, Nevada: a Bayesian approach. N Am J Fisheries Manage, 32:515-522.

David Herbst is a research scientist with the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory of the University of California. He has studied the physiology and ecology of saline lake algae and invertebrates of the Great Basin since 1976. His interests extend into the headwater streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where he investigates the effects of drought and climate change on watershed ecology. Bruce Medhurst joined the Herbst lab team at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab in 2001. His research interests have included aquatic toxicology and food web dynamics. He enjoys recreating year-round with his family in the vast outdoor laboratory of the Sierra Nevada. Ian Bell is a laboratory assistant at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab, where he loves the chance to get in the field and study Sierra streams and desert lakes. He will be studying water resources management at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the fall of 2014. Graham Chisholm, co-founder of Great Basin Bird Observatory, has been active on land and water conservation projects in the Great Basin for the past two decades, helping protect and restore lands on the Truckee, Carson, and Walker Rivers, and acquiring in-stream flow water rights for Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River, and the Lahontan Valley wetlands. cHAB Toxin Testing

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Terminal Lakes

The Salton Sea: An Uncertain Future for California’s Largest Lake

G. Chris Holdren

Figure Captions

The Salton Sea, the largest inland waterbody in the state of California, is facing an uncertain and

increasingly grim future. A previous LakeLine article (Barry and Anderson 2008) covered the history and some other characteristics of the Sea. This article will provide additional details on recent activity and conditions at the Salton Sea.

The Past Located in Imperial and Riverside Counties, the Salton Sea was once an important recreational resource. In the 1960s, the Salton Sea state recreation area drew more annual visitors than Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately, recreation began to fade following two tropical storms in the 1970s that damaged recreational facilities. Salinity, which had been near the level of 35 g/L found in seawater for much of the period from the 1920s through the mid-1980s, began to increase and reached 44 g/L by 1999 (Holdren and Montaño 2002). Fish kills and outbreaks of avian disease in the 1990s were also signs of degradation, but those events did increase scientific interest in the Sea. This renewed interest in the Salton Sea led to the Reclamation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-372), which directed the Secretary of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), to study options for managing the Sea. The Salton Sea Authority (SSA) was designated as co-lead for the State of California for the project. The overall goals of the Salton Sea Restoration Project were to:

• maintain the Sea as a repository of agricultural drainage;

• provide a safe, productive environment at the Sea for resident and migratory birds and endangered species;

• restore recreational uses at the Sea;

• maintain a viable sport fishery at the Sea; and

• enhance the Sea to provide economic development activities.

An intensive scientific effort initiated in January 1998, led to a series of reconnaissance investigations that were conducted beginning in 1999 to provide the scientific basis for the restoration effort. The results of many of those reconnaissance studies were reported in special editions of Lake and Reservoir Management 23(5) (2007), Hydrobiologia 473 (2002) and 604 (2008), and Studies in Avian Biology 27 (2004) Reclamation and the State of California examined dozens of alternatives in an attempt to find one that would meet all of the objectives of the Reclamation Act, but finding a viable alternative was elusive. The immense size of the Salton Sea (349 mi2), seismic activity in the area, uncertainty over future water supply, and other considerations drastically limited restoration alternatives. As a result of the size and complexity of the system, estimated costs for restoration measures that would meet all of the goals of the Salton Sea Restoration Project were in the billions of dollars. The Salton Basin, which contains the present-day Salton Sea, is located in a highly active tectonic region with frequent earthquakes. The area is dominated by the San Andreas, Imperial, San Jacinto, and Elsinore fault systems, and many moderate to large earthquakes occurred in the Salton Basin over the last 150 years.

All of the alternatives that would have stabilized the Sea surface at 1999 levels required construction of extensive levee systems. Estimated construction costs for structures that could withstand projected earthquakes were in the billions of dollars largely because of the numerous faults in the area. The uncertainty of future water supplies is also problematic. For many years California had been using more water than the amount they were allowed by the Colorado River compact signed by all seven states in the Colorado River basin and the federal government in 1922. Water demand has continued to grow in other basin states, resulting in signing of the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) in 2003. The QSA restricted California’s use of Colorado River water to the 4.4 million acre-ft /yr allowed under the Colorado River compact, but also allowed for water transfers out of the Salton Basin. The main impact of the QSA on the Sea will result from reduced inflows as water is transferred from the Imperial Valley to San Diego, Los Angeles, and other coastal cities to meet the needs of their growing populations. Reporting requirements of the Reclamation Act of 1998 were met in January 2000, when the Department of the Interior forwarded a draft EIS/EIR and several other documents to Congress. The Salton Sea also continues to collect agricultural drainage from extensive agricultural operations in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys. Although a major restoration project for the Salton Sea has not been implemented, seven different Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) projects were initiated to improve water quality by addressing sediment, trash, bacteria, and dissolved oxygen in the


drains and rivers entering the Salton Sea. Additional information on these TMDLs is available on the State of California, Colorado River Basin Regional Water Quality Control Board web site at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/coloradoriver/water_issues/programs/tmdl/tmdl_projects.shtml. An additional TMDL to address nutrient loadings to the Sea is under development.

The Present Water levels from October 1, 1987, when the USGS started to collect daily elevation levels at the Sea, through 2013 are shown in Figure 1. Water levels remained relatively stable through the 1990s but have been dropping steadily since that time. Mitigation water coming from land fallowed by the Imperial Irrigation District as part of the QSA has helped to slow the decrease, but water levels will soon begin to fall at a faster rate. Most monitoring at the Sea was curtailed as funding decreased following the intense scientific effort in the late 1990s. The Imperial Irrigation District continued to collect salinity data and the California Department of Fish and Game conducted quarterly net sampling from 2003-2008 to monitor the status and trends of the Salton Sea fisheries. In response to requests for additional water quality information, Reclamation initiated quarterly monitoring in 2004 to provide information on changes in water quality that are occurring as a result of water conservation measures and other projects intended to improve or maintain water quality in the Sea. Monitoring includes profiles for temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, and oxidation-reduction potential; major ion concentrations; nutrients; chlorophyll-a; Secchi depth; and total and dissolved organic carbon. Low dissolved oxygen concentrations continue to be a significant problem, with oxygen levels occasionally dropping to < 1 mg/L throughout the entire water column during the summer months. Local residents have long associated fish kills with mixing events referred to as “green tides.” A previous reconnaissance study (Marti-Cardona et al. 2008) found that these events were the result of mixing events that brought sulfide from the hypolimnion to the surface, where it

Figure 1. Salton Sea daily surface elevations, 1 October 1987 - 31 December 2013.

reacts with dissolved oxygen to form sulfate, stripping oxygen from the water. The sulfate then reacts with calcium to form gypsum (CaSO4

.2H2O). The gypsum crystals give the water a greenish tint that can be seen through satellite imagery, clearly showing the extent of the anoxic area (Figure 2). The oxygen loss during

some of the green tide events had led to the death of millions of fish on single days. Other key findings of Reclamation’s monitoring program include:

•Salinity in the Salton Sea increased from about 44 g/L in 1999 to over 55 g/L today (Figure 3).

Figure 2. MODIS satellite imagery showing the location of the Salton Sea and the extent of a “green tide.” Also visible is smoke from wildfires. Figure courtesy of Douglas Barnum, USGS.


•Suspended solids concentrations appear to have decreased in the Alamo and Whitewater Rivers but remained unchanged in the New River (Figure 4). Because of changes in sampling frequency between the 1999 study and the current study, it is hard to tell if the differences were the result of the TMDLs that were initiated in the watershed.

•Phosphorus concentrations in the Salton Sea appear to have increased since 1999 while nitrogen concentrations remain relatively unchanged (Figure 5), although concentrations have varied widely from year-to-year.

• Selenium concentrations, which are of particular concern to wildlife

Figure 3. Salton Sea whole lake total dissolved solids concentrations, 1999-2013.

Figure 4. Total suspended solids concentrations in rivers entering the Salton Sea, 1999-2013.

health, continue to remain low (1-2 µg/L) in the Salton Sea. Selenium concentrations in both the Alamo and New Rivers have changed little since 1999, while Se concentrations in the Whitewater River have decreased. Average concentrations for all years are 5.4 µg/L, 3.3 µg/L, and 2.0 µg/L for the Alamo, New, and Whitewater Rivers, respectively.

•Chlorophyll-a concentrations have varied widely (Figure 6), with an individual station reading as high as 648 µg/L in 2007. Variations in chlorophyll a concentrations are possibly related to drastic changes in Tilapia (Oreochromis mozambicus x O. urolepis hornorum) populations. Unfortunately, no

chlorophyll-a data are available from 2000-2003.

As recently as 1999, the Salton Sea was one of the most productive fisheries in the world (Reidel et al. 2002). A series of fish kills and increases in salinity decimated fish populations between 1999 and 2003. Monitoring conducted by the California Department of Fish and Game found that Tilapia populations reached a minimum in 2003 but increased significantly since that time. The other game fish, orangemouth corvina (Cynoscion xanthulus), croaker (Bairdiella icistia), and sargo (Anisotremus davidsoni) all appear to be extinct in the Sea. None of these species have been captured in net samples, totaling 9,449 net hours of effort, since mid-May 2003. In addition, none of these species have been detected in fish kills or presented by anglers since 2004 (Jack Crayon, California Department of Fish and Game, unpublished data). The USGS, with funding from Reclamation, operated an experimental Species Habitat Pond complex from 2005 through 2010 to evaluate the effectiveness of created habitat for wildlife. The primary goals of the SHP project were to conduct an ecological risk assessment, particularly for selenium; to evaluate avian numerical abundance, species diversity, nesting success, recruitment, and use patterns; to evaluate water, sediments, and aquatic invertebrate response to blended water; and to evaluate construction techniques and the durability of levees and islands. The SHP complex, consisting of four ponds each with four islands, was initially flooded in January 2006 and birds began using the pond by May 2006 (Figure 7). Water was delivered to the ponds from the Alamo River and Salton Sea and flowed by gravity through the complex, increasing in salinity as it flowed through the ponds. Results showed that created ponds were capable of creating viable habitat with minimal environmental risks.

The Future Under all options currently being considered, there are three outcomes for the Salton Sea that seem certain: (1) water levels will continue to fall, (2) salinity will continue to increase, which will greatly alter aquatic life in the Sea,


Figure 5. Salton Sea whole lake nutrient concentrations, 1999-2013.

Figure 6. Salton Sea whole lake chlorophyll-a concentrations, 1999-2013.

and (3) dust emissions will become an increasing problem as more and more of the current Sea floor is exposed by falling water levels. The State of California released their Final Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report (EIS/EIR) for the Salton Sea project in 2013 (California DWR/California DFW 2013) in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE). The preferred alternative calls for 3,770 acres of ponds constructed on either side of the New River, with pumped diversion of river water and cascading pond units. The intent of the Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) Project is intended to provide in-kind replacement for near-term habitat losses and to serve as a proof of concept for the restoration of shallow water habitat that supports fish and wildlife currently dependent upon the Sea. The information obtained would be used to measure project effectiveness, to refine operation and management of the ponds, to reduce uncertainties about key issues related to the project, and to serve as a guide for subsequent stages of habitat restoration at the Sea. The SCH Project is not intended to restore the entire Salton Sea, although information obtained from the initial project will guide future restoration efforts. A report by the Pacific Institute (Cohen and Hyun 2006) provided extensive descriptions of the changes that might occur in the Salton Sea in the absence of a restoration project. Interested readers can consult that report for more details. Beginning in 2017 when the mitigation water is lost, annual inflows to the Salton Sea will decrease by over 400,000 acre-ft/year compared to pre-QSA levels. This represents a loss of nearly one-third of the current inflow. Water levels will begin to drop dramatically and salinity levels will rapidly increase at that time. To date, actual changes in both elevation (Figure 1) and salinity (Figure 3) have closely tracked the predicted values (Figure 8). Water levels in the remnant Sea are expected to stabilize at about 255’ below sea level and salinity could increase to 250 g/L or more. At that point, any further evaporation will be limited by the high salt content and viscosity of the brine


Figure 7. USGS Experimental habitat pond. Photo courtesy of Douglas Barnum, USGS.

Figure 8. Future elevation and salinity trends at the Salton Sea (reprinted from Cohen and Byum 2006, courtesy of Michael Cohen, The Pacific Institute).

pool. The only remaining aquatic life is expected to be algae and bacteria.Table 1 shows the surface area of the Sea at water levels found in 1999, 2013, and levels projected for 2050. If these projections are correct, over 120 square miles of the Sea floor will become exposed as water levels fall. Mitigation of the expected dust problems will be a major expense for future restoration activities.

of <10 µm that are a major cause of health problems) in the state of California. PM10 particulates can increase the number and severity of asthma cases and other health problems, particularly among sensitive populations, which include children and the elderly. The future of the Salton Sea is not promising. Falling water levels have already caused most private docks to literally be left in the dust (Figure 9), and local residents have seen their dreams of living at the Sea shore recede along with the water levels. Whatever restoration methods are ultimately used, they promise to be expensive and the environmental impacts of the shrinking Sea will not be fully known for many years.

ReferencesBarry, B. and M.A. Anderson. 2008. The

Salton Sea. LakeLine (4):54-60.California DWR/California DFW. 2013.

Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat Project, Final Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Application No. SPL-2010-

Table 1. Salton Sea Surface Area at Various Elevations.

Elevation, ft (Year) -228 (1999) -232 (2013) -255 (2050)

Surface Area, acres (sq. miles) 231,973 (362.5) 223,336 (349.0) 151,497 (236.7)

Air quality is already a problem in the area surrounding the Salton Sea, with Imperial County having some of the highest concentrations of PM10 particulates (dust particles with a diameter


00142-LLC, State Clearinghoiuse No. 2010061062. Prepared by the California Department of Water Resources and California Department of Fish and Wildlife for the California Nations Resources Agency. Available at: http://www.water.ca.gov/saltonsea/docs/eir2013/FinalEIS_EIR_complete.pdf, accessed 4 August 2014.

Cohen, M.J. and K.H. Hyun. 2006. Hazard: The future of the Salton Sea with no restoration project. Pacific Institute. Available at: http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/report15.pdf, accessed 4 August 2014.

Holdren, G.C. and A. Montaño. 2002. Chemical and Physical Characteristics of the Salton Sea, California. Hydrobiologia, 473:1-21.

Marti-Cardona, B., T.E. Streissberg, S.G. Schladow and S.J. Hook. 2008. Relating fish kills to upwellings and wind patterns at the Salton Sea. Hydrobiologia, 604:85-95.

Reidel, R., L. Caskey and B.A. Costa-Pierce. 2002. Fish Biology and fisheries ecology of the Salton Sea, California. Hydrobiologia, 473:229-244.

Tiffany, M.A., S.L. Ustin and S.H. Hurlbert. 2007. Sulfide irruptions and

gypsum blooms in the Salton Sea as detected by satellite imagery, 1979-2006. Lake Reserv Manage, 23:637-652.

G. Chris Holdren, Ph.D., CLM, is the manager of the Environmental Applications and Research Group at the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, CO. He has over 40 years of experience with lake and reservoir management. Chris has been an active member of NALMS and its affiliates. He is a past president of NALMS and the Pennsylvania Lake Management Society, a former director of the Colorado Lake and Reservoir Management Association, and a former associate director of the Virginia Lakes and Watersheds Association. c

Figure 9. Residential docks in Salton City, California, 2014. Photo courtesy of Norm Niver, Salton City, CA.

A scientific publication of NALMS published up to four times per year solicits articles of a scientific nature, including case studies.

If you have been thinking about publishing the results of a recent study, or you have been hanging on to an old manuscript that just needs a little more polishing, now is the time to get those articles into your journal. There is room for your article in the next volume. Don’t delay sending your draft article. Let the editorial staff work with you to get your article ready for publishing. You will have a great feeling of achievement, and you will be contributing to the science of managing our precious lakes and reservoirs.

Anyone who has made or plans to make presentations at any of the NALMS conferences, consider writing your talk and submitting it to the journal. It is much easier to do when it is fresh in your mind.

Send those articles or, if you have any questions at all, contact: Al Sosiak, Editor, Lake and Reservoir Management.

If there is anyone who would like to read articles for scientific content, please contact Al Sosiak. The journal can use your help in helping the editorial staff in editing articles.

c

LAKE and RESERvOiR

MANAgEMENT


Terminal Lakes

Mono Lake: Streams Taken and Given Back, But Still Waiting

David B. Herbst

Mono Lake lies at the western edge of the Great Basin desert and the eastern scarp of the Sierra Nevada

Mountains, just east of Yosemite National Park. An isolated remnant of Pleistocene Lake Russell, the lake is set in a volcanic basin, with crater islands pushed up from beneath the lakebed adding to the scenic surroundings of mountain and desert vistas. Covering an area of about 70 square miles, the lake is renowned for limestone tufa towers emerging from underwater around the shores, and the throngs of birds that come to feed on abundant brine shrimp (Artemia monica) and alkali flies (Ephydra hians). This ancient volcanic-tectonic lake, estimated at more than 700,000 years old, has passed through long histories of glaciation and expansion, drought and contraction, and in modern times has set historic legal precedence for the protection of ecological values of terminal lakes.

Namesake The name Mono is derived from the Native American Yokut word “fly,” applied to the Monache people living on the eastern slopes of the Sierra at Mono Lake – the Kuzedika Paiutes. These people from the lake of the fly may have been known as such because of the commerce provided by the harvesting of pupae of the alkali fly as food from the lake. Early explorers such as Israel Russell observed the gathering of fly pupae “kutsavi” during which pupae attached to shallow submerged rocks were dislodged by kicking, and the floating pupae gathered from the water surface, dried in the sun, and the puparium case crushed and removed from the fat-rich pupa, about the size of a grain of rice. Flies were so productive that this was a staple food to not only the Kuzedika, but

provided a valuable source of trade with coastal Indians (Davis and Logan 1965).

Chemistry and Tufa Towers At the current surface elevation of 6,380 feet above mean sea level (MSL), the lake has an average depth of 60 feet and salinity of about 83 g/L total dissolved solutes consisting of an alkaline mix of carbonate, bicarbonate, sulfate, and chloride salts of sodium at a pH near 10. It is this high-carbonate alkalinity that promotes the formation of the lakes iconic tufa towers (Figure 1). These are formed as spring water, rich in dissolved calcium, bubbles up into the lake from submerged springs and precipitates as

Figure 1. Tufa towers in Mono Lake.

calcium carbonate limestone structures that accrete gradually into towers. Pumice blocks cast out from volcanic eruptions also serve as nucleation sites for the formation of gaylussite crystals that may also eventually turn into limestone (Bischoff et al. 1991). Still more exotic is the limestone that is added to tufa from excretions of alkali fly larvae. These insect larvae drink in carbonate-rich lake water, then remove these ions from the blood of their open circulatory system by combining with calcium inside the lime glands – modified Malpighian tubules, the kidneys of insects (Herbst and Bradley 1989). When larvae pupate and attach themselves to tufa for protection from


waves, the contents of the lime glands are discharged and this cements to the tufa, adding to the complex reef-like surface of these exquisite rock formations.

History of Lake Level and Salinity Although there have been natural fluctuations in climate, lake level, and salinity over the ages of this lake basin, diversion of tributary streams in 1941 for Los Angeles water supply began a period of protracted inflow deficit at Mono Lake. Without streams to balance evaporative losses, the lake declined rapidly, losing 45 feet and reaching a low in 1981 (Figure 2). Salinity doubled in that time from about 50 to 100 g/L, dust flats emerged on the dried margins of the lake, islands with breeding bird colonies were bridged to land where predators could gain access, and aquatic life was stressed by the concentrated salt load. In 1978 the Mono Lake Committee formed to publicize the plight of the lake, document the problems, and seek conservation solutions that would both protect the lake and save water in Los Angeles (www.monolake.org). In 1994, the State Water Resources Control Board ordered that streams be returned to Mono Lake and determined that a lake level of 6,392 feet MSL could provide a compromise that preserved

Figure 2. Mono Lake water level changes since 1850 with the line at 6392’ elevation showing the management level ordered by the California State Water Resources Control Board.

ecological values of the lake, minimized air pollution from dust, restored stream ecosystems, and could still deliver a modicum of water and power to the city. Hydrologic models suggested that this could be achieved in 20 years but now in 2014, that has yet to be realized. This may be due to models based on inaccurate optimistic assumptions for Sierra runoff, underestimated evaporation rates, and to changing climate.

Climate Change Forecasts Mountain stream flow has been shifting to more coming from rain than snowmelt, earlier melting runoff, and being more prone to drought and extreme variations such as winter flooding. Forecasts for the Mono Basin based on climate change models suggest a significant hydrologic shift by the end of the century (Ficklin et al. 2013). Modeling predicts 15 percent decrease in annual streamflow, peak runoff earlier by a month, from June to May, plus the likelihood of wet water year types declines and droughts become more frequent. The challenge of water management and sustaining the health of habitats of all kinds is contingent on planning that incorporates this likely future.

Simple Ecosystem and Severe Chemical Environment There are few species capable of tolerating the harsh chemical environment of the lake, but for those adapted, there is little competition for resources and few predators. The brine shrimp Artemia monica, a species endemic to the lake, thrives in the open water plankton. It is even harvested for commercial sale (often in aquaculture). This primitive crustacean filter feeds on phytoplankton with feathery legs that also serve as gills and is capable of osmoregulation in high salinity, but at a price – slower growth and reduced reproduction (Dana and Lenz 1986). The abundance of this species is affected by wet-year meromictic conditions whereby the lake fails to mix when inflowing freshwater layers over more saline, deep nutrients become unavailable, and the phytoplankton food to shrimp is scarce and limits growth and reproduction (Melack and Jellison 1998). Meanwhile, living in the shallows of the littoral region, especially in the rocky tufa tidal zone, are the larvae and pupae of the alkali fly, also capable of osmoregulation (Herbst et al. 1988). Adults of the alkali fly are capable of crawling underwater, enveloped in a film of air, where they feed on, and lay eggs in algae. Although they maintain ionic and osmotic equilibrium over a wide salinity range, as the concentration rises, the growth rates of larvae and size at maturity of pupae decrease, resulting in fewer adults emerging and those that do are smaller, have less fat reserve, and lower reproductive success, and are further limited by less algae food resources (Figure 3). This inhibitory influence of salinity on aquatic life at Mono Lake and other salt lakes is an important factor to consider in setting lake levels for conservation management of productive habitat. Mono Lake is a haven for bird life, especially shorebirds, coming to feed along the shores or in the shallows, on the prolific alkali fly. All life stages of the flies serve as aggregated food – the larvae in shallow areas on algae mats or on tufa, pupae floating on the surface, and adults along the edges of the water (Figure 4). Notable are the tens of thousands of Wilson’s and Red-necked Phalaropes, migratory species that refuel at productive


Figure 3. Results from 500-L mesocosm experiments at Mono Lake showing the production of emerging flies at different salinities and equivalent lake levels. As salinity increases, fewer flies emerge, the size of flies (the pies) is smaller, they contain less fat (pie slice), and growth of benthic algae is reduced (dark area at bottom of tanks). From Herbst and Blinn (1998).

Figure 4. Adult flies aggregated along the edges of the lakeshore, providing a readily available food source to shorebirds.

saline lakes, wintering in South America (often the altiplano desert) and breeding in North America (Canada and the Arctic). These birds can be seen spinning on the water surface near shore where they create a vortex of water that brings fly larvae or other invertebrates to the surface where they pick them off. Eared Grebes are also abundant, in excess of a million birds on migrations, stopping to dive and feed on shrimp and flies. Mono Lake is also host to island colonies of the California Gulls. When lake levels drop, these islands become land-bridged, giving access to predators like coyotes that have decimated the colony. Waterfowl were once abundant on the lake and in onshore wetland marshes that were extensive at higher lake levels. Millions of mixed migratory ducks including Northern Shovelers, Ruddy Ducks and others came to feed on mixed insects and vegetation. Water in the streams that had been dried has been restored for fishery and riparian values, supporting planted trout and many birds in the re-growing streamside forests. Keeping in-stream flows for fish habitat as a requirement of law delivers water to the lake in turn, and so encompasses restoration of the watershed from source to sink.

Conservation Victories Highlightthe Integration of Science and Public Trust Water Law The Mono Lake Committee was founded on scientific research showing the impacts of lower levels and rising salinity. Conservation efforts began with scientific documentation of how salinity affected the health of aquatic life, the value of the lake to hundreds of thousands of water birds, and the stream habitat lost on Rush and Lee Vining Creeks. Combined with this evidence, legal arguments to protect the lake as a public trust resource set a precedent for laws that preserve natural values of waters as a common heritage of people and wildlife. The State has a duty to maintain this public trust doctrine. The prescription for Mono Lake was return of stream flow until it reached an elevation where aesthetic, recreation, and ecological values would be balanced with urban water needs. The lake essentially won back rights to half of the water volume it had lost, to be returned to a salinity near


75 g/L. We don’t yet know how long that will take or if that long-range goal can be achieved.

References Bischoff, J.L., D.B. Herbst and R.J.

Rosenbauer. 1991. Gaylussite formation at Mono Lake, California. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 55:1743-1747.

Dana, G.L. and P.H. Lenz. 1986. Effects of increasing salinity on an Artemia population from Mono Lake, California. Oecologia, 68:428-436.

Davis, E.L. and R.F. Logan. 1965. An ethnography of the Kuzedika Paiute of Mono Lake, Mono County, California. Anthropological papers (University of Utah) No. 75. University of Utah Press.

Ficklin, D.L., I.T. Stewart and E.P. Maurer. 2013. Effects of projected climate change on the hydrology of the Mono Lake Basin, California. Climate Change, 116:111-131.

Herbst, D.B. and D.W. Blinn. 1998. Experimental mesocosm studies of salinity effects on the benthic algal community of a saline lake. J Phycology, 34:772-778.

Herbst, D.B, F.P. Conte and V.J. Brookes. 1988. Osmoregulation in an alkaline salt lake insect Ephydra (Hydropyrus) hians Say (Diptera: Ephydridae), in relation to water chemistry. J Insect Physiol, 34:903-909.

Herbst, D.B. and T.J. Bradley. 1989. A Malpighian tubule lime gland in an insect inhabiting alkaline salt lake. J Experimental Biol, 145:63-78.

Melack, J.M. and R. Jellison. 1998. Limnological conditions in Mono Lake: contrasting monomixis and meromixis in the 1990s. Hydrobiologia, 384:21-39.

David Herbst is a research scientist with the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory of the University of California. He has studied the physiology and ecology of saline lake algae and invertebrates of the Great Basin since 1976. His interests extend into the headwater streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains where he investigates the effects of drought and climate change on watershed ecology. c

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Terminal Lakes

More than Meets the Eye:Managing Salinity in Great Salt Lake, Utah

James S. White, Sarah E. Null, and David Tarboton

Great Salt Lake (GSL) is a pluvial lake and a remnant of historic Lake Bonneville. It is the largest

saline lake in the Western Hemisphere, and fourth-largest in the world. The only outflow of water is via evaporation, causing a very gradual accumulation of minerals. Over time, this has led to high salinity in GSL, and is responsible for the relatively simple but highly productive saline ecosystem. The lake is a critical link in the Pacific flyway, supporting millions of migratory and resident birds, which feed on invertebrates inhabiting the lake. The lake is also used commercially for mineral extraction and brine shrimp harvest. GSL is vital to the local and regional economy, contributing an estimated $1.3 billion, and supporting nearly 8,000 jobs. In 1959, Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) constructed a rock-filled causeway across GSL, bisecting the lake from Promontory Point on the east bank, to the West Desert on the west bank (Figure 1). This caused the lake to be separated into north and south bays, Gunnison and Gilbert Bay, respectively. Upon completion, flow between the bays was restricted to the semi-porous fill material and two 4.5 m wide culverts installed during causeway construction. In 1984, an 88 m wide and 4 m deep breach was added to the causeway to increase inter-bay flow and alleviate flooding (it was later deepened to 6.4 m). Ninety-five percent of streamflow enters the south bay, causing an elevation gradient to form between the two bays (the south bay is roughly 0.3 meters higher than the north bay). Because of the hydrologic isolation and discrepancy of inflows between the bays, the causeway has become a key driver of salinity in GSL. The north bay is often at or near saturation levels,

Figure 1. Major watersheds of Great Salt Lake. The West Desert contributes a very small amount of water to the lake.

averaging 317 g/L since 1966, while the south is considerably less saline, averaging 142 g/L since 1966. The causeway was built on soft lake sediments and has slowly subsided

through time. The two 4.5 m wide culverts became unstable and in 2012 through 2013 they were closed. To replace the flow provided by the culverts, UPR has proposed to build a 55 m


trapezoidal bridge. However, changes to lake level and salinity from the bridge had previously not been quantified. To evaluate how the proposed bridge opening will affect the salinity of both bays of the lake, we simulated historical and proposed causeway changes with a modified version of the USGS Great Salt Lake Fortran Model (Waddel and Bolke 1973; Wold et al. 1997; Loving et al 2000). Salinity and lake level have an inverse relationship, whereby salinity increases as lake level drops, and decreases as lake level rises. Lake level changes primarily from precipitation and surface runoff. Thus, salinity is highly variable over time, and dependent on climatic conditions. Periods of drought give rise to high salinity, whereas high precipitation periods result in dilution. While salinity varies significantly over time, total mineral (salt) load in GSL is much more consistent. Total mineral load is the mass of salts in the lake that does not change with precipitation and surface runoff. Prior to human development, salt load changed over geologic timescales, with miniscule but accumulating contributions from tributaries. In human timescales, the salt load of GSL can be thought of as constant, except for human activities like mineral extraction. Two factors have reduced GSL mineral load over the past 50 years. The first is extracting minerals such as sodium chloride, magnesium, and potassium for commercial uses. The second is pumping Great Salt Lake water into the West Desert to protect Salt Lake City from lake flooding during consecutive wet years. Pumps were built in 1987 and mineral load was reduced by approximately 0.5 billion tons during wet years of the late 1980’s. Mineral load loss from GSL over the past 50 years due to mineral extraction and pumping is approximately 1 billion tons. Salinity differences between the bays have significant impacts on ecology, mineralogy, and commercial and recreational uses The hypersaline north bay is largely inhospitable for macroinvertebrates such as brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) and brine fly (Ephydra cinera). Instead, it is characterized by large populations of archaea (microbes) and red-algae. This causes a discoloration that is easily visible

to the naked eye and even satellite images (Figure 2). In contrast, the relatively moderate salinities of the south bay provide habitat for large populations of Artemia and Ephydra, which are vital food sources for birds. However, during periods of high precipitation, salinity drops, allowing freshwater predators such as corixids (water boatmen), usually intolerant to GSL conditions, to prey on Artemia and decimate populations (Wurtsbaugh and Berry 1998). Lake managers are concerned that if culverts remain closed and new openings are not installed, the causeway will result in water that is too salty in the north bay and too fresh in the south bay to maintain Artemia populations. Our research provides estimates for salinity, salt load, and lake level to evaluate Artemia habitat with current and proposed modifications to the causeway.

Model Methods and Validation The USGS GSL Fortran Model uses a mass balance approach to calculate

Figure 2. Aerial image of Great Sale Lake. Photo from NASA Earth Observatory.

total volume and mineral load for both bays at each timestep (every two days). The model was originally developed in 1973, and was updated in 1997 and 2000. A schematic of major model inputs and outputs are illustrated in Figure 3. Three different alternatives were modeled.

1. Historical – causeway with two open culverts and breach. Results from this run were compared to measured data to test model performance.

2. Proposed bridge – Causeway with the proposed bridge and breach. This estimates lake level and salinity with proposed railroad causeway changes (but historical climate data) and allows a direct comparison to the historical model run.

3. Whole lake – A whole lake condition without a causeway. The lake exhibits a single salinity behavior. Human-induced


Figure 3. Schematic of major model inputs and outputs

modifications are identical to the two previous runs so that lost mineral load to pumping and extraction are included, and streamflows have been reduced from withdrawals for consumptive, agricultural and industrial use.

Results We compared 1966 – 2012 modeled and measured data to evaluate model fit for lake level (Figure 4), salinity concentration (Figure 5) and salt load (Figure 6). The model represents past conditions well, with an exception for

Figure 4. Measured (black and blue) and modeled (red and green) lake level since 1966. South bay (black and red) averages roughly 0.3 m higher than north bay.

salinity and load in the mid through late 1990s, when salinity concentration and load is under-predicted compared to measurements. We attribute these discrepancies to a limitation of the model that assumes no flow through the culverts if they are submerged, conditions that occurred throughout much of the 1990s. In reality, a density gradient from different salinity concentrations between the two bays would have caused some flow through the culverts. Despite this limitation, we are confident in the model’s ability to replicate GSL dynamics.

Results from the historical proposed bridge model show that the proposed bridge would ameliorate salinity differences between the north and south bays, returning lake level and salinity to more natural conditions (Figure 7). On average, north arm salinity is reduced 41 g/l, and south arm salinity is increased 34 g/l (Table 1). While the north bay still reaches saturation approximately 10 percent of time period, it is closer to the whole lake model simulation, where the average salinity is 222 g/l.

Implications for Ecology and Management We focus attention on Artemia, as they are a primary food source for migratory birds and a reasonable proxy for other salt-tolerant organisms such as Ephydra. Although Artemia growth and fitness are dependent on more than just salinity, such as temperature, food abundance, and predation, salinity levels are a key driver for growth and survival. Ongoing research into salinity tolerances for Artemia suggests an upper salinity threshold of 225 g/l. While specimens can be observed in higher salinities, fitness is greatly reduced and populations are likely small and isolated. Establishing a low salinity threshold for Artemia is more difficult because predation, not physiology, likely controls survival. While lab experiments show Artemia survive to 10 g/l, we used 60 g/l as a low threshold, as this was the salinity in the 1980’s, where Artemia populations began to collapse. Below 60 g/l, predators such as corixids begin to populate the lake and prey on Artemia in significant numbers. Overlaying these thresholds on our results (Figure 7), results show that in both the historical and proposed bridge models the south arm nearly always provides habitat with suitable salinities, while the north is almost always too saline. As shown in Figure 7, conditions in the late 1980s and late 1990s were inhospitable to Artemia. This is validated by several studies showing significant loss of Artemia populations during these periods (Wurtsbaugh 1998). Our proposed bridge results suggest that had the bridge been in place instead of culverts, salinity in the south bay would have been saline enough so that Artemia were not threatened. Furthermore, the north arm

Monthly imputsStreamflowUSGS streamflow data for:• Bear River• Jordan River• Weber River

EvaporationCalculated via mass balance (more accurate than meteorological equations)

Direct PrecipitationObtained from Oregon State University PRISM program

Initial conditions

Each arm:• Mineral loads• Lake elevation

Updated USGS Great Salt Lake

Model

Monthly aggregated outputs (each arm):• Lake elevation/volume

• Mineral load

• Mineral concentration (salinity)

• Flow through openings


Figure 5. Measured (points) and modeled (lines) salinity over time. Different colored points represent different locations where salinity was measured.

Figure 6. Measured (points) and modeled (lines) total salt load over time. Different colored points represent different locations of measurements. Blue line represents modeled precipitated salt load.

Figure 7. Historical, proposed, and undivided lake model run. Proposed bridge is consistently closer to undivided lake condition than historical.

would have provided habitat from 1984-1992, whereas with culverts, the north bay supported Artemia from 1986-1989 (Figure 8). Our research shows that causeway opening design (e.g., culverts, bridge, breach) affects salinities in GSL’s north and south bays. Results indicate that of the alternatives we evaluated, the proposed bridge will best ameliorate salinity differences between the north and south bays and benefit lake ecology, although additional research is needed to evaluate hydrodynamic changes from modified causeway openings. We anticipate that the proposed bridge would support brine shrimp in 95 percent of the years of the 1966-2012 model runs we completed; whereas, current conditions with the breach and closed culverts would support brine shrimp for only 85 percent of the 46-year model period (Figure 9). We recommend the proposed bridge design for the GSL railroad causeway instead of maintaining the causeway with closed culverts for sustainable management of GSL salinity and ecology (Figure 10).

ReferencesLoving, B.L., K.M. Waddell and C.W.

Miller. 2000. Water and salt balance of Great Salt Lake, Utah, and simulation of water and salt movement through the causeway, 1987-98, U.S. Geol. Surv. Water Resour. Invest. Rep., 2000-4221.

Waddell, K.M. and E.L. Bolke. 1973. The effects of restricted circulation on the salt balance of Great Salt Lake, Utah. Water Resour. Bull. Rep. 18, Utah Geol. and Mineral Survey, Salt Lake City.

Wold, S.R., B.E. Thomas and K.M. Waddell. 1997. Water and salt balance of Great Salt Lake, Utah, and simulation of water and salt movement through the causeway. U.S. Geol. Survey Water Supply Pap., 2450.

Wurtsbaugh, W.A. and T. Smith Berry. 1998. Cascading effects of decreased salinity on the plankton, chemistry, and physics of the Great Salt Lake (Utah). Can J Fish Aquatic Sci, 47:100-109.


Table 1. Mean, Minimum, and Maximum Salinity by Model Run. James S. White is a graduate student in the Watershed Science Department at Utah State University. His research includes modeling changes to Great Salt Lake and reconstructing historical lake conditions.

Sarah E. Null is an assistant professor in the Watershed Science Department Utah State University. Her research includes modeling changes to ecosystems and water supply from climate change and Great Salt Lake hydrology.

David Tarboton is a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Utah State University. His research includes hydrologic predictions using geographic information systems and digital elevation models and has done extensive research on the hydrology of Great Salt Lake. c

Figure 8. View from Union Pacific Railroad Causeway looking east. Note red color of north bay on left. Photo courtesy of Wayne Wurtsbaugh.

Figure 9. Commercial brine shrimp harvesting. Brine shrimp cysts (eggs) visible in foreground appear similar to an oil slick. Photo courtesy of Wayne Wurtsbaugh.

Figure 10. Tundra Swans on Great Salt Lake. Photo courtesy of Chris Luecke.


Terminal Lakes

Lake Abert, OR: A Terminal LakeUnder Extreme Water Stress

Ron Larson and Joe Eilers

Western Intermountain Lakes are Dying

Water is life! Searching that phrase with Google brought 1.9 billion results, so there must be

something to it. In fact that statement could not be truer than in the arid West. Take for example, Lake Abert in south-central Oregon. In most years the lake has attracted waterbirds in almost countless numbers. In fact, Lake Abert surpassed the Great Salt Lake as having the highest densities of shorebirds on a per area basis. Now, waterbirds and other species dependent on Lake Abert and other terminal lakes throughout much of the intermountain West are at risk from a drying climate and unsustainable water diversions, as is described in this edition of LakeLine.

Lake Abert Introduction Lake Abert is located in the far northwest corner of the hydrographic Great Basin, in Lake County Oregon

(Figure 1). In their winter 2011 LakeLine article, Larson and Larson described how Lake Abert, a salty and highly alkaline terminal (or endorheic) lake, is one of two lakes that are remnants of Lake Chewaucan, which existed during the Pleistocene epoch. Today, 10,000 years later, the future of Lake Abert is in doubt. Lake Abert has a watershed of over 850 square miles. Because the watershed is in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountain Range, the watershed produces little runoff in relationship to its size, and consequently annual water yield averages less than 150 acre-feet per square mile. Its main tributary, the Chewaucan River, drains about 650 square miles. Lake Abert’s hydrology is now dominated by brief periods of rising water levels during infrequent wet years, followed by longer periods of declining water levels due to dry conditions where evaporation exceeds inflows. Because annual evaporation rates from the lake average 40 inches (Phillips and Van

Denburgh (1971), it takes only a few years of low inflows to shrink the lake.

History of Lake Abert Water Levels Within recorded history, Lake Abert reached a maximum elevation of approximately 4,260.5 feet above mean sea level (msl) in 1958, following an unusually wet period (Phillips and Van Denburgh (1971). At that elevation, the lake covered 64 square miles, contained an estimated volume of 500,000 acre-feet, and had a maximum depth of about 15 feet. Decades earlier during the extended drought of the Dust Bowl era of the 1920s and 1930s, the lake was dry or nearly so for 6 years, and reached its lowest documented elevation of approximately 4,245 feet (msl). At that elevation, Lake Abert covered approximately 12 square miles, had an estimated volume of 3,000 acre-feet, and the maximum water depth was only about 2 feet. Based on the dramatic changes in size, volume, and depth experienced by

Figure 1. Lake Abert looking north from near the south end of the lake (June 16, 2014). Salt deposits are visible along the shore due to the low lake levels and high salinity. The cause of the brown water is unknown but may be precipitated iron.


Lake Abert in the 20th century, it is clear that the lake is a sensitive indicator of hydrologic conditions. This sensitivity is based partially on the balance between precipitation rates in the watershed and evaporation from the lake. However, inflows to the lake are further reduced by upstream agricultural diversions, as well as a storage and evaporation from a private reservoir. Exactly what the impact of these hydrologic alterations is on the lake is unclear because the State of Oregon does not monitor agricultural diversions, nor does it currently measure water levels in the lake. Fortunately, concerned volunteers have monitored water levels, but this has become increasingly difficult because water levels are well below the lowest staff gage (Figure 2). One indication of the possible effect water diversions have on the lake is the fact that water rights from the Chewaucan River upstream from the lake equal a rate sum of over 350 cubic feet per second (cfs), according to data provided on the Oregon Department of Water Resources website. That diversion rate, if fully used, would exceed total flow in the river in most months during most years. Lake Abert Varying Water Chemistry Not only does Lake Abert experience considerable hydrologic variability, its water chemistry is also changing. In 1963, the lake contained an estimated 13 million tons of dissolved solids and was described as the largest inland saline water body in the Pacific Northwest by Phillips and Van Denburgh (1971). Sodium, chloride, and carbonate are the major ions present in the lake (Van Denburgh 1975). The salinity, which is a measure of total dissolved solids, is inversely related to lake volume, with salinity increasing as lake volume decreases. For example, in 1958, when the lake was at its largest recorded volume, the salinity was 18 g/L (Phillips and Van Denburgh 1971), which is about half that of seawater, which averages about 35 g/L. This is in contrast to the dissolved solid concentration we recently measured in June 2014, when it reached 280 g/L. Once the lake reaches a salinity of between 50 and 100 g/L, it has serious adverse effects to algae, brine shrimp, and brine flies, the primary prey of the waterbirds (Boula

Figure 2. Lake Abert, March15, 2014. The lowest staff gage is on the boulder directly behind the person and water levels were below the gage. By mid-June 2014, the water level was several hundred feet beyond the gage.

1985; Keister 1992; Herbst 1994; Herbst and Bradley 2004).

Recent Impacts from Drying Climate and Unsustained Water Diversions In the past decade, Lake Abert has experienced only two years of high inflows – 2006 and 2011. Since 2000, water levels, water volume, and depth in the lake have declined. This has resulted in higher salinities, which has had dire consequences on its ecosystem. Most plants and animals that live in salt lakes have an optimum salinity that is similar to that of the ocean. If the salinity is less, freshwater-adapted species can invade and alter saline ecosystems. And, if the salinity gets too high, it causes osmotic stress, increased energy demands, and consequently productivity and biodiversity are reduced. Additional stress from high salinities can come from reduced concentrations of dissolved oxygen. That problem was evident in Lake Abert in 2010 when salinities reached about 170 g/L. That summer, brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) turned bright red from high levels of hemoglobin that they produced in response to reduced concentrations of dissolved oxygen. In August of that year the water turned red because dying brine shrimp were concentrated near shore in windrows. That year alkali or shore flies (Ephydra hians), which normally are present in vast numbers along the Lake Abert shoreline, were mostly confined to a few areas

along the shore where freshwater seeps reduced the salinity. The numbers of migrating waterbirds (e.g., avocets, stilts, phalaropes, sandpipers, gulls, and ducks) was also much reduced from previous years, so it was evident that there was a cascading effect of high salinities that propagated through the food web. In 2011, conditions improved due to higher inflows that reduced salinities to below 100 g/L, but in 2012, low inflows allowed salinities to increase and in October 2012 they reached 160 g/L. Of more concern were conditions in 2013 when the lake once again experienced a high-salinity-driven ecosystem collapse. Somehow brine shrimp hatched that spring, even though most of the lake was considered too salty to support these invertebrates. Apparently, inflows entering at the south end of the lake reduced salinities sufficiently for brine shrimp to hatch and they apparently survived the higher salinities that they experienced later as the lake mixed. Nevertheless, the shrimp remained small throughout the season, likely a result of osmotic stress and low primary productivity caused by the high salinity. By late July 2013, evaporation caused the salinity to reach 200 g/L, and finally in early August, the brine shrimp died and flies were scarce. Loss of the invertebrate food base evidently caused waterbirds to leave the lake prematurely, because in late July 2013 approximately 350,000 waterbirds, mostly Wilson’s phalaropes, were present at the lake, but a month later numbers


were less than 3,000 according to data collected by volunteers from the East Cascades Audubon Society and posted on their website (www.eBird.org). Keith Kreuz, who with his wife Lynn, have harvested brine shrimp from the lake for 30 years, managed to capture a small amount of brine shrimp for his Oregon Desert Brine Shrimp Company, but by August, low harvests forced Keith to halt operations. By September of 2013, the salinity in the lake was nearly 250 g/L, and something happened that hadn’t occurred in the lake in over 80 years, salt began precipitating from the saturated brine. Most of this was calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which formed crusts of triangular white or translucent crystals up to half-inch in length over areas of the shoreline (Figure 3), and salt was present on the lake bottom and brine in the sediment.

2014 Observations So far in 2014, the situation for the ecosystem at Lake Abert is even worse than it has been previously except for the extended Dust Bowl era drought. Inflows to the lake over the 2013-2014 winter and spring were minimal with lake elevations only increasing a few inches from the previous fall, and a wide band of alkali-encrusted shoreline was present at both ends of the lake (Figure 4). In the spring of 2014 there was no hatch of brine shrimp and adult alkali flies were confined to freshwater seeps. As a result, Keith and Lynn Kreuz were unable to harvest shrimp, which is the first time this has happened in three decades. The most recent lake level measurement made in mid-June 2014 indicated that the lake was at 4246.2 feet (msl). The lake has not been that low since 1937. At the end of July 2014, the lake had receded so far that we were unable to measure the elevation. What remained of the lake had tuned a vivid red color (Figure 5). We believe the red coloration is from salt-loving or “halophytic” bacteria that are also known as extremophiles, because they can survive under very harsh environmental conditions such as the high osmotic stress resulting from extreme salinities. Halobacterium is the likely species present in the lake. It has also been

Figure 3. Calcite crystals up to 0.5 inches long appeared along the shore of Lake Abert in September 2013.

Figure 4. South end of Lake Abert June 16, 2014, looking west and showing an extensive alkali-encrusted playa forming due to low water levels. The Chewaucan River enters the lake from the left. Flow into the lake was estimated to be less than 1 cubic foot per second.

reported from the Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake, and the Dead Sea. Halobacterium has a red photosynthetic pigment called bacteriorhodopsin. If hydrologic conditions continue, Lake Abert will remain in an ecological state where it can only support halophytic bacteria like Halobacterium. Some aspects of the current state of Lake Abert are not new, since it has likely undergone similar events multiple times in the past. Its biota is adapted to

such events and will return once inflows resume and salinities decline. However, past events occurred before the hydrology was impacted by surface and groundwater depletions, and climate change may create a drier climate than has been seen in the recent past. The current situation at Lake Abert is partially the result of a lack of concern by policy makes and managers charged with protection of natural resources. Lake Abert is a public trust resource that


the State of Oregon has responsibility to protect. Finally, Oregon has adopted an “Integrated Water Resources Strategy” that requires the Oregon Department of Water Resources to create an integrated state water resource policy [ORS 536.220(2) (a)]. Lake Abert and adjacent terminal lakes, including Goose Lake and the Warner Lakes, may well be the litmus test of this strategy. We are hopeful, but not optimistic, that implementation of this plan will result in future water-use decisions that consider how Lake Abert and the species that depend on it will be affected. Lake Abert is a watery jewel in a parched landscape that has been a key feeding stopover site for migrating waterbirds. Its future is in our hands.

ReferencesBoula, K.M. 1986. Foraging ecology

of migrant water birds, Lake Abert, Oregon. M.S. thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. 99 pp.

Herbst, D.B. 1994. Aquatic ecology of the littoral zone of Lake Abert: Defining critical lakes levels and optimum salinity for biological health. Report prepared for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, August 1994. 33 pp.

Herbst, D.B. and T.J. Bradley. 2004. Salinity and nutrient limitations on growth of benthic algae from two alkaline salt lakes of the western Great Basin (USA). J. Phycol. 25(4):673-678 (published online: October 29, 2004).

Keister, G.P., Jr. 1992. The ecology of Lake Abert: Analysis of further development. Special Report, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Salem, OR, April 1992. 34 pp.

Phillips, K.N. and A.S. Van Denburgh. 1971. Hydrology and geochemistry of Abert, Summer, and Goose lakes, and other closed-basin lakes in south-central Oregon. Closed-Basin Investigations, U.S. Geol. Survey Prof. Paper 502-B, 86 pp.

Van Denburgh, A.S. 1975. Solute balance at Abert and Summer lakes, south-central

Oregon. Closed-Basin Investigations, U.S. Geol. Survey Prof. Paper 502-C, 29 pp.

Figure 5. South end of Lake Abert July 30, 2014, looking southwest. The lake has receded further from conditions in June 2014 and has taken on a red color believed to be from the halophytic bacterium Halobacterium.

Next Issue – Winter 2014 LakeLine

In our next issue, we look at “Lakes in Winter.”

When cold weather arrives,

how do fish, plants, and algae cope?

Does water chemistry change?

Find out next in the winter LakeLine.

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Terminal Lakes

Owens Lake – From Dustbowl toMosaic of Salt Water Habitats

David B. Herbst and Michael Prather

It’s hard to call this a lake. The body of water that once covered this basin from shore to shore is gone, having dwindled

to a hypersaline pool in the area where it was once deepest after the city of Los Angeles famously diverted the Owens River to support booming growth some 100 years ago. Along with the brine pool though, there is now a mosaic of about 40 square miles of ponded waters of varied extent, scattered across much of the ancient lakebed, maintained not by natural inflow but by a system of irrigation pipes and sprinklers. The Owens Lake basin is located at the southern end of the Owens Valley, at about 1,080 m elevation, surrounded by the southern Sierra Nevada on the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east. Although located in an arid desert climate, the Sierra snowpack delivers many streams down its eastern slopes into the Owens River. During the late Pleistocene and Holocene, lake levels varied with climatic wet and dry periods, and were interconnected during high stands with rivers flowing from Mono Lake, through Owens into a chain of lakes in Searles, Panamint, and Death Valley (Bacon et al. 2006). Under drier climate regimes, a saline lake and sometimes desiccated playa existed during episodes of the past 20,000 years. Streams of the eastern Sierra attracted the interest of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) in the early 20th century. Employing sometimes deceitful land purchase practices to acquire 240,000 acres of Owens Valley and associated water rights, streams that would have flowed to Owens Lake eventually provided most of the water supply to the city (Reisner 1993). The first aqueduct to Los Angles was completed just over

100 years ago, in 1913, and captured all streams flowing east from the Sierra as far north as Bishop. It also cut off 62 miles of the Owens River channel above Owens Lake. Over the next decade or so Owens Lake dried down to a chain of small wetlands and mudflats along its shoreline. In 1969, a second aqueduct was completed and began pumping groundwater as well as diverting streams. Massive pumping began in 1970 causing the extinction of the largest natural springs in the Owens Valley as well as the destruction of many acres of wetlands.

Before Diversions Early records of visits to pre-aqueduct Owens Lake indicate this was an expansive body of water and habitat to an abundance of aquatic life that supported large numbers of waterfowl and shorebirds. Reference was often made to the similarities of this body of water to Mono Lake to the north. After the Civil War there were several major expeditions of geographic exploration and documentation undertaken in the western United States. At the same time Major John Wesley Powell was engaged in his famous ventures into the lower Colorado River and Grand Canyon, Lieutenant George M. Wheeler was conducting topographic and geologic surveys of the far west including eastern California. In 1876, Wheeler visited the region of Owens Lake and gave this superlative description, excerpted here in part because it is the earliest most complete account of the lake environs:

This lake is, next to Mono Lake in Mono County, California, certainly the most interesting lake on the North American Continent. Situated

in a basin of about 4,000 feet above sea-level, its shores are bounded on the west side by the majestic Sierra Nevada, rising abruptly to towering peaks of 14,000 to 15,000 feet; and on the east side by the precipitous Inyo range, with the famous mines of Cerro Gordo and an altitude of 10,000 feet. Standing on the summit of this range, the panorama spread out in all directions is one of the grandest, most overwhelming views to behold, although there is no verdure to delight the eye and to support the ornamentation of the scenery. How far beneath us lies the Salinas Valley on one side, the Owens Valley on the other! How perpendicular the mountains, how diminutive the lake! How are we deluded by the optic refraction of the superposed strata of air of different temperature! Truly, to observe the setting sun on these heights, the changing tints of the sky, the spreading of darkness over peaks and valley, is a spectacle never to be forgotten. The Owens Lake has no outlet and is fed by the Owens River. . . . as the level of the lake remains constant, there must be a perfect equilibrium between the amount of evaporation and the incoming water. The lake having 110 square miles surface, an evaporation of 4.6 feet per year would suffice to swallow up the annual volume of Owens River. Those who cannot appreciate the amount of evaporation have invented the hypothesis of a subterranean outlet, as in the case of Great Salt Lake in Utah. The water has a strong saline and alkaline taste, and is far-famed in Mono and Inyo Counties for its cleansing properties, surpassing those


Owens Lake – From Dustbowl toMosaic of Salt uWater Habitats

David B. Herbst and Michael Prather

of soap. Neither fish nor mollusks can exist, but some forms of lower animal life are plentiful, as infusoriae, copepoda, and larvae of insects. While around the lake the vegetation consists of two salt plants, Bryzopyrum and Halostrachys, the vegetation in the lake is confined to an algous or fundgoid plant, floating in small globular masses, of whitish or yellowish-green color in the water. These accumulate on certain localities of the lake-bottom and near the shore and undergo decay, emitting a feces-like odor, as observed also in the treatment of albuminous matters with caustic alkalies. One of the most striking phenomena is the occurrence of a singular fly, that covers the shore of the lake in a stratum 2 feet in width and 2 inches in thickness, and occurs nowhere else in the county; only at Mono Lake, another alkaline lake, is it seen again. The insect is inseparable from the alkaline water, and feeds upon the organic matter of the above-named alga that is washed in masses upon the shore. In the larva state it inhabits the alkaline lake, in especially great numbers in August and September, and the squaws congregate here to fish with baskets for them. Dried in the sun and mixed with flour, they serve as a sort of bread of great delicacy for the Indians (Annual Report 1876).

The reference to floating algae in the lake no doubt indicates the presence of the salt-tolerant filamentous green alga Ctenocladus circinnatus (Herbst and Castenholz 1994), often found as floating balls washed on beaches or settled in shallow waters near shores. The fly is Ephydra hians, also known from Mono Lake, and the copepoda may refer to the brine shrimp Artemia (copepods are not found in hypersaline conditions). The abundance of ducks and other water birds is evidence of the productivity and importance of Owens Lake as a wildlife habitat during this era. Chemical analysis of a water sample taken during the Wheeler visit yielded a total salt content of 63.6 g/L, dominated by sodium carbonate salts, and having a specific gravity of 1.051. Another water

sample taken in 1886 showed a salinity of 72.7 during a time of little change in lake volume. Agricultural development in the Owens Valley during the late part of the 19th century was enabled through irrigation withdrawals from the Owens River and severely limited inflows to Owens Lake. During the 1890s the lake elevation declined and salinities rose to around 200 g/L. Wet climatic conditions reversed this trend for a time but by 1913 the Owens Valley aqueduct was completed and farming water rights had been bought out, diverting the flow of the Owens River and resulting in drying of the main body of the lake by about 1926. Since then, except for a few isolated wet

Figure 1. Red-colored water of heavy salt-saturated brine support halobacteria in a remnant pool in the western portion of the lakebed.

years of inflow, the only remnant of the lake had been a pool of saturated brine in the western portion of the lakebed (Figure 1). Scarce aquatic habitat also remained as marginal seeps, springs, wild wells, and their outflows onto salt flats and shallow ponds. The great naturalist Joseph Grinnell visited Owens Lake in 1917 and his field notes provide a picture of Owens Lake prior to the impacts of the Los Angeles aqueduct:

Great numbers of water birds are in sight along the shore – Avocets, Phalaropes and Ducks. Large flocks of shorebirds in flight over the water


in the distance, wheeling about show en masse, now silvery now dark, against the gray-blue of the water. There must literally be thousands of birds within sight of this spot. En route around the south end of Owens Lake to Olancha saw water birds almost continuously. . . . The shore shallows are thronged with water birds. Avocets predominate; I estimated one bird every four feet of shoreline, which would make 1300 per mile!

By some accounts Owens Lake has been a dead habitat since it became dry. Known now primarily for the plumes of alkali dust that periodically blow off the playa surface during windstorms, the ecological values of the saline lake ecosystem had been ignored or forgotten but are now being considered. While there is considerable public attention to the human health concern related to fine dust particles that, when breathed, may cause respiratory ailments, the health of the lake as a habitat had been widely regarded as a lost cause. Contrary to this view, the existence of fringing habitats in the form of spring and seep outflows around the edges of the playa represent habitat refuges and potential colonization sources for the renewal of an interconnected aquatic ecosystem in the Owens Lake basin. Owens Lake is not a dead habitat, only dormant. Growing again these days like you might water a lawn.

Rehydration As the early accounts of the lake and its life attest, Owens had been a productive body of water. The sprinklers and flood irrigation ponds and channels now provide a revival of lost ecological values in a mosaic of saline water habitats that sustain a great variety of microbial, algae, and invertebrate life that attract hundreds of thousands of birds of many species. Some areas are fresh enough to support sheltering aquatic vegetation to waterfowl and diverse invertebrate inhabitants, others are hypersaline pools suitable only red-tinged halobacteria, but shallow pools at moderate salinity levels provide conditions that grow dense mats of algae that are consumed by prolific populations of salt flies and in turn by shorebirds in the thousands (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Ponds at moderate salinity levels (25 to 75 g/L) are ideal for the growth of mats of benthic algae (mostly diatoms) that provide food for different species of brine fly larvae. Adults emerge and congregate along the pond margins, seen as the dark bands in this photo.

In addition to the devastating effects diversions of the river had on the aquatic ecosystem, bird and wildlife habitat, the dry playa created a tremendous air pollution hazard, as dust blown from the exposed lakebed into the atmosphere far exceeded national air quality standards. In 1998, after years of conflict, under order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address this air pollution, Los Angeles and the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District signed a Memorandum of Understanding whereby the City of Los Angeles accepted responsibility for the creation of the largest single-source PM10 dust hazard in the country. They committed to remediating the dust emissions as per the California Clean Air Act. The environmental document for the dust control project allowed three approved methods – water (sheet flooding and ponding), gravel, and native vegetation. To date LADWP has covered the lake bed with about 40 square miles of sheet flooded and ponded “cells” (Figures 3 and 4). Approximately 4 square miles have managed vegetation and 3 square miles are covered in gravel. Currently there is 90 percent attainment of the dust control compliance. The cost so far for the Los Angeles Owens Lake Dust Control Project is over $1.2 billion. Nearly half of the Los Angeles Aqueduct flow is now diverted

back to Owens Lake for dust control. Water for dust control began flowing in November 2001. Migrating waterfowl and shorebirds began using all watered areas immediately. Through the efforts of the local Eastern Sierra Audubon Society chapter and Audubon-California the project has added habitat goals for various guilds of birds and for alkali meadows/seeps/springs. A lake-wide survey of birds in April of 2013 found 115,000 birds. This included 20 species of shorebirds totaling 63,000 birds. Each year Owens Lake is averaging 600-700 adult snowy plovers, a California Species of Special Concern. It is the largest nesting location for the species in California. Wildlife at Owens Lake is considered part of California’s Public Trust law as a result of the 1983 Mono Lake California Supreme Court Decision. This decision ruled that wildlife is a public trust and must be balanced with the need for water of the City of Los Angeles. The primary goals of the Owens Lake Dust Control Project are to conserve water and to protect and enhance existing habitat values for waterfowl and shorebirds as well as alkali meadows, seeps and springs. Responses of aquatic life to salinity vary from requiring near salt-saturated conditions for growth in the red halobacteria of the old lake brine pool, through moderate-salinity tolerant


Figure 3. Bubbler on the lake produces outflow into saline pond habitats.

Figure 4. Sprinklers on the lakebed can provide water for wetland marsh vegetation.

algae, brine flies, and shrimp, to requiring fresh water for varied species of aquatic invertebrates, birds, and plants. Red-colored water of heavy salt-saturated brines is produced by halobacteria, a form of primitive prokaryote cells with a purple protein pigment that uses sunlight to pump protons across membranes and release energy stored as ATP, and that also have protective red-orange pigments known as carotenoids (as in carrots).

Brine shrimp and brine flies both must spend energy to keep salts from entering their body fluids and cells, so excess salinity can be intolerable but they thrive at moderate levels where they can avoid predators or competition from species that are not salt-adapted (Herbst 2001). Fresher water coming from springs, seeps, wild wells (uncontrolled outflows), and flood irrigation create wetlands supporting a diverse mix of aquatic life forms along

a gradient of outflow evaporating onto the playa. Diversity of invertebrate food items is high at lower salinity but abundance is greatest at moderate salinity. Different bird species take advantage of what amounts to a mosaic of habitat values suited to varied feeding types and habitat preferences (Figure 5). This has been the basis of management planning that is supposed to maintain suitable habitat conditions for breeding and migratory guilds of birds from diving ducks to shorebirds (LADWP 2013). Dust-control irrigation has provided the opportunity for rejuvenated aquatic environments of varied biological make-up and an area of productive shallow water habitat that meets or even exceeds that of the pre-diversion lake littoral region. LADWP now has plans to decrease water application under future management scenarios by over 50 percent and this leaves uncertain how the area and quality of aquatic habitat that has been created can be sustained while saving water. With less water, the cover of aquatic habitat must inevitably decline and/or salinity increase.

ReferencesAnnual Report of the Chief of Engineers

to the Secretary of War, Part III, United States Army Corps of Engineers. 1876. Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, p. 409.

Bacon, S.N., R.M. Burke, S.K. Pezzpane and A.S. Jayko. 2006. Last glacial maximum and Holocene lake levels of Owens Lake, eastern California, USA. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25:1264-1282.

Herbst, D.B. and R.W. Castenholz. 1994. Growth of the filamentous green algae Ctenocladus circinnatus (Chaetphorales: Chlorophyceae) in relation to environmental salinity. J Phycology, 30:588-593.

Herbst, D.B. 2001. Gradients of salinity stress, environmental stability and water chemistry as a templet for defining habitat types and physiological strategies in inland salt waters. Hydrobiologia, 466:209-219.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 2013. Owens Lake Master Project – transitioning to waterless and water-wise solutions. Unpublished document.


Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac Desert – the American West and It’s Disappearing Water. Revised Edition. Penguin Books.

David Herbst is a research scientist with the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory of the University of California. He has studied the physiology and ecology of saline lake algae and invertebrates of the Great Basin since 1976. His interests extend into the headwater streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains where he investigates the effects of drought and climate change on watershed ecology.

Michael Prather is a conservationist living in Lone Pine, CA. He has focused his work on Owens Lake shorebird and waterfowl habitat protection and enhancement for over 30 years. c

Figure 5. Avocets, stilts and other shorebirds are attracted by the new pools.


Terminal Lakes

Lakes Winnemucca and Pyramid:One Gone, One Saved

Joseph Eilers and Sandra Walker

For shame! For shame! You dare to cry out Liberty, when you hold us in places against our will, driving us from place to place as if we were beasts.

~ Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (b. ~ 1844, d. 1891), born Thocmentony or Tocmetone, Paiute for “Shell Flower” (“Piutes” was the early spelling for what is currently spelled as “Paiutes”) (Hopkins 1883).

Death of Lake Winnemucca

The outrage that Sarah Winnemucca expressed about the treatment of her people by the whites did not even

touch upon the disaster to a lake that bore her name. Four decades after her death, the lake would be erased in the span of a generation. Here we describe a lake that is truly “dead” and an adjacent lake that so far has avoided the same fate. One might think that eliminating a 30-mile-long lake would attract some attention, especially one that hosted 30 million birds and huge trout. However, all that remains of Lake Winnemucca is a dusty depression near the Black Rock Desert (home of the Burning Man Festival) in northwestern Nevada (Figure 1). No signs, no tombstones, no obituaries in the paper, no large display in the local museum . . . just gone. That’s what happens with a truly dead lake. There is little life there now; birds, lizards, and rabbits are difficult to find. The only signs of wildlife on a recent visit were gnats at dusk. We offer a brief eulogy for Lake Winnemucca and contrast that with a more optimist outlook for Pyramid Lake. Lakes Winnemucca and Pyramid were once part of the Pleistocene

Figure 1. Satellite image of Pyramid Lake and the dry lakebed to the right that was Lake Winnemucca. The Truckee River enters Pyramid Lake from the south.

Lahontan Lake complex (see Herbst et al., this issue). As the climate dried, Pyramid and Winnemucca lakes became distinct lakes, but still connected by a wetland. Pyramid Lake, which lies in a deep trough, became the last known refuge for a remnant population of Lahontan cutthroat trout. Its shallower neighbor, Lake Winnemucca, supported extensive peripheral wetlands and attracted huge populations of waterfowl, including the white pelican. This abundance of life also attracted early settlements of newcomers to the continent. The shores of the once-productive lake were home to tribes that produced the earliest documented petroglyphs (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130815-lake-winnemucca-

petroglyphs-ancient-rock-art-nevada/) in the Americas (Benson et al. 2013). It is likely that the extent of Lake Winnemucca varied with fluctuations in climate, forcing tribes to periodically move to more permanent sites such as Pyramid Lake. Their modern-day descendants, the Paiutes, enjoyed the region until encounters with the U.S. cavalry and white settlers became increasingly unpleasant and eventually violent. Part of this sad history was documented by Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of Chief Winnemucca and granddaughter of Chief Truckee (Hopkins 1883). What is now the Lake Winnemucca dry lake bed was ingloriously called Mud Lake by the white settlers. Sarah Winnemucca wrote of the early years


in which the Paiutes were rounded up on a reservation established in 1860. The reservation contained Winnemucca and Pyramid lakes as well extensive holdings beyond the lakes, but confined the Tribe to a small fraction of their former lands. Both lakes contained large trout populations that helped to sustain the Tribe. However, in 1867, the railroad divided the reservation in half leaving the Tribe with only one lake and a greatly diminished reservation. Both Lakes Winnemucca and Pyramid were maintained by inflow from the Truckee River and had similarly low salinity, about 3.5 g/L (Clarke 1924). As late as 1895, Lake Winnemucca was still a significant body of water when it was studied by Russell (1895). He indicated that Pyramid Lake was over 350 ft. deep and the deepest contour shown for Winnemucca was 30 ft. The 121 mile-long Truckee River is the sole outlet from Lake Tahoe and the flows were rapidly appropriated for irrigation and drinking water supplies. This trend accelerated with the completion of the Derby Dam in 1905, which diverted significant flows to the agricultural fields near Fallon. The final blow to Lake Winnemucca occurred with the construction of a road along the western shore of the lake that blocked the remaining inflows into the former wetland connecting Lake Winnemucca with Pyramid Lake. By the 1930s, Lake Winnemucca was nearly desiccated. Even its designation as a national wildlife refuge by President Roosevelt didn’t protect it from getting the life sucked out of it. Some views of the lake bed illustrate the now desolate terrain (Figures 2-6).

Assault on Pyramid Lake During this period, Pyramid Lake was also declining. It’s estimated that the lake stage dropped by 80 feet from its height prior to white settlers. Salinity increased and the number of Lahontan cutthroat trout declined because their access to spawning grounds in the Truckee River had been blocked by the formation of a large delta at the mouth of the Truckee River and by the Derby Dam. In 1936, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe was formally recognized by the federal government and assumed control of Pyramid Lake and the surrounding lands, but too late to head off the apparent

Figure 2. Lake Winnemucca looking across the lake bed, 2014. Photo by Emily Stayner.

Figure 3. Lake Winnemucca lake bed to the left and ancient tufa formations derived carbonate deposits, often formed in the vicinity of springs. Photo by Eldore Wood.

extinction of the trout in1939. In what was good science, combined with a bit of luck, a fishery scientist correctly identified a remnant population of Lahontan cutthroat trout surviving in a creek on the Nevada/Utah border (Hickman and Behnke 1979). How the trout ended up several hundred miles from the Pyramid Lake is unknown, although the activities of “bucket biologists” would be a good guess. The emaciated trout were nursed back to health and formed the recovery brood stock. The remarkable find allowed the Tribe to propagate the recovered

species and successfully reintroduce it into Pyramid Lake. Since then, 20-pound trout have been caught and biologists are hopeful that the 1925 record of a 41- pound Lahontan cutthroat trout may one day be surpassed. Another large species of fish, the cui-ui, a long-lived sucker found only in Pyramid Lake, experienced dramatically reduced numbers and only three surviving age classes. This was also attributed to loss of access to the Truckee River. However, it is also making a dramatic recovery and they are now


Figure 4. Close-up of circular tufa formation at Lake Winnemucca. Photo by Eldore Wood.

Figure 5. Looking across the expanse of Lake Winnemucca. Photo by Eldore Wood.

Figure 6. Tufas in the foreground frame the former lake bed of Lake Winnemucca. Photo by Emily Stayner.

moving into spawning reaches of the Truckee River in large numbers. There is reason to be optimistic about the fisheries and water in Pyramid Lake; the lake levels have stabilized and salinity values, which reached 5.5 g/L, have also stopped increasing (Figure 7).

The Modern Battleground – The Courts The political status that comes from Tribal recognition enabled the Paiutes to negotiate directly with the federal government and has brought more resources to help resolve some of the long-standing conflicts. The Tribe now operates three hatcheries to produce both trout and cui-ui. The recognition of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe was achieved only after a long struggle involving numerous court actions. Two critical pieces of legislation that facilitated the path towards recovery of Pyramid Lake were the Endangered Species Act (1967) and the renewal of the Clean Water Act (1987), both of which provided the Tribe with a strong footing in court (Wagner and Lebo 1996). Additional water for the Tribe and the lake was made possible through completion of the three Bureau of Reclamation dams whose discharge flow to the Truckee River. These include Prosser Creek Dam (1962), Stampede Reservoir (1970) on the Little Truckee River, and the smaller Marble Bluff Dam (1975), which provides flow for a fishway to allow the trout and cui-ui to migrate upstream and spawn. The fishway is actually a lock that fills with water and allows the fish to migrate above the Truckee River delta that was exposed when the lake stage was lowered 80 feet.


Lake, Nevada, amidst competing interests. J Soil Water Conserv, March-April:108-117.

Joe Eilers is a professional hydrologist and limnologist with MaxDepth Aquatics, Inc. in Bend, Oregon. He has been working on lakes in the western United States since 1986.

Sandra Walker has spent 30 years in the renewable energy development sector with a current focus on energy water nexus challenges in California. She has spent much of that time involved in developing emerging technologies in water and energy sectors that provide low-cost, low-input, low-impact solutions. c

However, as the previous articles in this issue illustrate, there remains a need for vigilance to guard against future attempts to access the water now reaching Pyramid Lake. A glance at the Lake Winnemucca dry lake bed only reinforces this need. The words of Sarah Winnemucca reveal how the white settlers and cavalry were viewed by this articulate princess of the Paiute nation:

They came like a lion, yes like a roaring lion, and have continued so ever since. . . .

Perhaps we can learn from misdeeds of the past, both in terms of dealings with people and how we treat the lakes that enrich our lives.

Acknowledgments We thank Eldore Wood ([email protected]) and Emily Stayner for spending time at Lake Winnemucca and Pyramid Lake and

Figure 7. Clear water lapping at the shore of Pyramid Lake, looking to the northeast. Photo by Eldore Wood.

providing their excellent photographs used in this article.

ReferencesBenson, L.V., E.M. Hattori, J. Southon

and B. Aleck. 2013. Dating North America’s oldest petroglyphs, Winnemucca Lake subbasin, Nevada. J Archaeological Sci, 40:4466–4476; doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.06.022.

Clarke, F.W. 1924. The composition of the river and lake waters of the United States. U.S. Geological Survey. Professional Paper 135. 199 pp.

Hickman, T.J. and R. J. Behnke.1979. Probable discovery of the original Pyramid Lake cutthroat trout. Progressive Fish-Culturist, 41:135-137.

Hopkins, S.W. 1883. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. 246 pp + appendix.

Russell, I.C. 1895. Present and extinct lakes of Nevada. Nat Geographic Monographs. June, 1895.

Wagner, P. and M.E. Lebo. 1996. Managing the resources of Pyramid


Zak Slagle Student CornerWhat Makes for a Successful Bass Nest in Florida?

Bass (Micropterus spp.) are an important and popular freshwater sportfish throughout the United

States, especially in the state of Florida. In 2006, bass anglers in Florida generated $1.25 billion, which supported more than 12,000 jobs (U.S. D.O.I. 2006). Due to this major economic impact, the bass fishery receives focused attention from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). The overall importance of this fishery in the state of Florida has recently led FWC to develop the Black Bass Management Plan with the intention to guide the next 30 years of black bass management in Florida. Major goals of FWC’s Black Bass Management Plan are to maintain and improve Florida’s bass fishery. A component of the Black Bass Management Plan is a focus on bass spawning as related to improving Florida’s bass fishery, because anglers target spawning fish. FWC’s public surveys identified fishing for spawning bass (or bed fishing) as a topic that concerns Florida anglers. Anglers with such concern are worried that by allowing the public to fish for spawning bass, nesting is disrupted and bass populations suffer as a result. Harmful effects of bed fishing on bass fishing are possible, but the jury is still out – fewer young bass means greater food and habitat availability for the young bass that remain. These young bass grow faster and survive better as a result, reducing or eliminating the impact of bed fishing. The relative impact of bed fishing, whether harmful or helpful to bass success, is understudied. The FWC is investigating bass spawning and bed fishing in order to improve the fishery and alleviate stakeholder concerns.

Bass Spawning and Bed Fishing Bass spawn in the spring, aggressively guarding their nests and attracting anglers as a result. The male bass scoops out a shallow depression in the substrate and then courts a female. Once the female lays eggs in the nest, the male fertilizes them and protects them while they mature. Parental care includes fanning the eggs to provide sufficient oxygen and aggressively defending the eggs from nest predators such as bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus). The heightened aggression also causes the fish to be more vulnerable to anglers, because the fish will attack anything it perceives to be a threat to the nest, including lures. If a bass is caught off his nest, the nest is unguarded and vulnerable to predation. Nest predators eat the eggs and destroy the nest. If enough bass are caught off nests in a lake, many nests would be destroyed and the overall bass population may suffer as a result. Studies on northern largemouth and smallmouth basses (Micropterus salmoides salmoides and Micropterus dolomieu) showed that larger bass are more vulnerable to angling and are better able to protect their nests (Gingerich and Suski 2001; Parkos et al. 2011). Anglers seek out large bass, and in doing so are targeting the fish with the highest contributions to the following year’s fish (because larger fish have more offspring). Florida largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides floridanus) nesting success has not been well studied. There are also important differences in the biology of Florida largemouth bass compared to the northern largemouth and smallmouth basses along with differences in climate between regions. Florida largemouth bass are different biologically as they grow larger and at different rates than

their northern counterparts. The warmer climate in Florida also provides spawning fish with a wider window of temperate weather. We decided to examine biological and climate components that may attribute to differences in Florida bass nest success. Specifically, the objectives of our study were to assess biological and environmental factors influencing nest success and to estimate daily nest survival for Florida bass. A better understanding of what drives a bass nest to be successful could help us to understand the potential impacts of bed fishing.

Snorkel Surveys With funding from the FWC, we measured Florida largemouth bass nesting success from 2010 through 2013. Our study site included four small ponds southeast of Hawthorne, Florida. These ponds ranged from 3-18 hectares and were located on private, undeveloped land closed to public fishing. Each year of study, we completed weekly snorkel surveys starting in January and continuing through May. We divided the shoreline of each lake into smaller transects. We randomly selected three to six transects for each of the four lakes to examine on each sampling date. Snorkelers swam each transect in a zigzag pattern between shore and ~3 meters depth, looking for bass nests (Figure 1). When a snorkeler encountered a nest, the following variables were recorded: water depth, presence or absence of a guarding bass, size of the guarding bass, nest substrate, and nest size. We marked the nest with a numbered flag, in order to relocate the nest for the next sampling. Snorkelers revisited each nest until the nest fate was determined, either successful (the brood


fish grew in size to be a free-swimming fry ball; Figure 2) or failed (the eggs/larvae grew fungus or were eaten). After data were collected, we used the nest survival analysis within Program MARK to calculate daily nest survival. We generated nest survival models including all possible combinations of each possible factor, for a total of 64 models.

Nesting Success in Florida Over four years of nest surveys, we surveyed a total of 334 bass nests. We

Figure 1. Snorkeler surveying a bass nest.

Figure 2. Roughly two week old Florida largemouth bass fry, independent from the nest.

noted aquatic plants were frequently used by Florida largemouth bass in nest construction (Figure 3). There were many nests that incorporated aquatic plants (75 percent of surveyed nests), primarily Spatterdock (Nuphar advena) and Maidencane (Panicum hemitomon). Nesting took place between January and May, peaking when water temperatures reached 20-24°C (68-74°F). We only saw a guarding male bass on 64 percent of the nests. Previous research on northern largemouth and

smallmouth basses has not noted active nests without a guarding male fish, and if no male fish was located, the nest was counted as “failed.” In this study, there were many broods without a male bass guarding them. While some of these broods died, many of them survived to become independent from the nest, also called the swim-up fry stage. Due to the success of many of these nests, we hypothesize that in many cases the male guarding bass detected the snorkeler approaching and temporarily left the nest, then returned when the threat had passed. Florida largemouth bass had substantially lower nest fidelity than their northern counterparts, which could indicate lessened aggression as well. We calculated brood daily survival and compared broods that differed based on water temperature, size of the nest, presence or absence of the male bass, size of the male bass, depth, lake, and year. Florida largemouth daily nest survival was 0.88 in this study. This is similar to northern largemouth and smallmouth bass nest survival in other studies, which varied between 0.86-0.96 (Steinhart et al. 2005; Suski and Ridgway 2007). Nest success in the northern species is driven by presence of a guarding male, the size of that male, and the size of the nest. In our study, we found that, like the northern basses, presence of a male bass increased

Figure 3. Typical Florida largemouth bass nest, using Spatterdock (Nuphar advena) roots for stabilization.


Figure 4. Daily nest survival estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals averaged across all models for presence of a male guarding bass.

nest survival more than any other evaluated factor (Figure 4). However, there was only a minor difference in nest survival between guarded and unguarded nests. The other factors we evaluated (depth, nest size, lake, year, male size, and substrate) had little impact on nest survival (Figures 5 and 6). If nest size or temperature of the lake had a strong effect on nest survival, we would expect to see a sloped line instead of the flat line seen in these figures. Unlike northern basses, Florida largemouth bass nesting success was not strongly driven by presence of a male bass, the size of that male, or the size of the nest in this study.

Implications for Bed Fishing in Florida Florida largemouth bass displayed less aggression in nest defense than northern relatives in our study. Our finding could be explained in several ways. Alligators in Florida lakes may have eaten the most aggressive bass. Lessened aggression may be a developed trait from coexisting with alligators. Multiple spawning attempts may also explain lessened aggression and the longer spawning season in Florida. Florida Largemouth Bass may have the luxury to more readily abandon their nests (e.g., due to predation or fishing pressure), because they can build a new nest or spawn again later in the spawning season. Comparatively, while northern basses have multiple spawning attempts, they only have a two- to three-week window of optimal lake temperatures in which to spawn. From our work, it is unclear as to whether the lessened aggression is specific to Florida largemouth or is due more to outside factors such as natural predators or a longer period of potential spawning due to a sustained warmer climate, respectively. Overall, the lessened aggression in Florida largemouth bass has implications for bed fishing management. For northern largemouth and smallmouth basses, loss of a guarding male bass has a major impact on nest survival. Loss of a guarding male bass is also detrimental to Florida largemouth nests, but appears to be less important. Bed fishing is potentially less harmful to Florida largemouth broods compared to northern counterparts because Florida largemouth bass nests seem less sensitive to nest

Figure 5. Daily nest survival estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals averaged across all models for relative nest size (1 = smallest; 5 = biggest).

Figure 6. Daily nest survival estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals averaged across all models for temperature in degrees Celsius.


abandonment. Florida largemouth bass are less aggressive, meaning they would be more difficult to catch off of their nests. Therefore, fewer nests would then be abandoned (i.e., fail) due to angling. Our study illustrates the importance of establishing the link between brood survival and recruitment to the fishery. We do not understand how decreased individual nest success impacts the fish population in following years. Outcomes from this study facilitate improved evaluation of the effects of angling on bass fisheries in the State of Florida. The FWC is currently investigating several aspects of bed fishing impacts that include our study results along with other investigations. Together we will help inform future policy decisions to better our nation’s already great freshwater fisheries.

ReferencesGingerich, A.J. and C.D. Suski. 2011. The

role of progeny quality and male size in the nesting success of Smallmouth Bass: integrating field and laboratory studies. Aquatic Ecology 45, 505-515.

Parkos, J.J., D.H. Wahl and D.P. Philipp. 2011. Influence of behavior and mating success on brood-specific contribution to fish recruitment in ponds. Ecological Applications 21, 2576-2586.

Steinhart, G.B., N.J. Leonard, R.A. Stein and E.A. Marschall. 2005. Effects of storms, angling, and nest predation during angling on Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu) nest success. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 62, 2649-2660.

Suski, C.D. and M.S. Ridgway. 2007. Climate and body size influence nest survival in a fish with parental care. The

Journal of Animal Ecology 76, 730–-739.

U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). 2006. 2006 National survey of fishing, hunting, and wildlife-associated recreation – Florida report.

Zak Slagle is a recent master’s graduate of the University of Florida’s fisheries and aquatic sciences program (2014). He is interested in all manner of fisheries topics, most recently the detectability of a rare fish species in Florida. c

We'd like to hear from you! Tell us what you think of LakeLine. We welcome your comments about specific articles and about the magazine in general. What would you like to see in LakeLine?

Send comments by letter or e-mail to editor Bill Jones (see page 5 for contact information). c


Affiliate& Other News

NALMS Participation in Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) NALMS has served on this advisory committee since 2003 when it was invited by the Department of Interior to become a member. The purpose of ACWI is to “improve information for decision making about natural resources management andenvironmental protection.” Steve Heiskary was appointed by then-President Jeff Schloss to serve as NALMS member on ACWI. Steve was recently re-appointed by the Department of Interior to continue to serve as NALMS representative on ACWI. One of the key activities of ACWI, in this past year, was to aid Assistant Secretary Anne Castle in a review of USGS programming and budget. This was to be discussed, along with other topics, at the August 2014 meeting of ACWI. Information on ACWI and its varied activities may be found at http://acwi.gov/aboutus.html. Another ACWI initiative NALMS was involved in, dealt with the Water Resources Adaptation to Climate Change Workgroup. The workgroup was commissioned to identify research, data, and policy necessary for effective management and protection of water resources in the U.S. as the climate continues to change. ACWI invited NALMS to participate on this workgroup. Several NALMS members expressed interest in serving in this capacity and the NALMS Executive Committee selected Nancy Turyk to represent NALMS, with Dennis McCauley as an alternate for the working group. Routes of communication between Nancy and NALMS membership is through feedback obtained at the annual conference. Communication with the Board has been via email and an annual report. The workgroup recently completed a report “National Action Plan: Priorities for Managing Freshwater Resources in a Changing Climate,” which is available on the ACWI website at http://acwi.gov/climate_wkg/Climate_water_recommendations_rptapril_21_2014_final_draft.pdf. Should you have any questions on ACWI and NALMS involvement feel free to contact Steve Heiskary at [email protected]. Questions on the Climate Change Workgroup may be directed to Nancy Turyk at [email protected].

Steven HeiskaryResearch ScientistEAO DivisionMinnesota Pollution Control Agency

California Lake Management Society (CALMS)The annual CALMS conference will be held October 9-10, 2014 at the University of California Davis. Day 1 includes a full day of presentations, discussions, networking time, and a CALMS business meeting on the lovely UC Davis campus, followed by a buffet dinner and live music at Sudwerk Restaurant & Brewery. Day 2 is a field trip by bus to Camanche Reservoir, hosted by Dr. Alex Horne. Themes of this year’s conference include: mercury management, watershed connections, and Quagga mussels. Lodging for the CALMS conference will be handled by the Hallmark Inn at UC Davis.

Washington State Lake Protection Association (WALPA)The Washington State Lake Protection Association (WALPA) will be hosting their 27th annual conference in beautiful Chelan, WA, September 30-October 2, 2014. Campbell’s Resort on Lake Chelan will serve as the conference venue. The conference theme is “Applied Limnology.” Registration and exhibit set-up will begin at 12:00 p.m. Tuesday, September 30, during the pre-conference workshop offerings. Tentative session topics, to begin October 1st, include:• Lake Chelan• Student research• Harmful Algae Blooms• Volunteer Monitoring• Fish• Aquatic Invertebrates• Invasive plants


Bill Jones Literature Search

(LITERATURE SEARCH . . . continued on page 10)

Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater EcosystemsQuinn, A., B. Gallardo and D.C. Aldridge. 2014. Quantifying the ecological niche overlap between two interacting invasive species: the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) and the quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis). Aquat Conserv: Marine and Freshwater Ecosys, 24(3): 324-337.

Ecology of Freshwater FishMuir, A.M., P. Vecsei, M. Power, C.C. Krueger and J.D. Reist. 2014. Morphology and life history of the Great Slave Lake ciscoes (Salmoniformes: Coregonidae). Ecol of Freshwater Fish, 23(3): 453-469.

Environmental Toxicology and ChemistryFinlayson, B.J., J.M. Eilers, and H.A. Huchko. 2014. Fate and behavior of rotenone in Diamond Lake, Oregon, USA following invasive tui chub eradication. Environ Toxicol Chem, 33(7): 1650-1655.

Freshwater BiologyMolot, L.A., S.B. Watson, I.F. Creed, C.G. Trick, S.K. McCabe, M.J. Verschoor, R.J. Sorichetti, C. Powe, J.J. Venkiteswaran and S.L.Schiff. 2014. A novel model for cyanobacteria bloom formation: the critical role of anoxia and ferrous iron. Fresh Biol, 59(6): 1323-1340.

Berthon, V., B. Alric, F. Rimet and M.E. Perga. 2014 Sensitivity and responses of diatoms to climate warming in lakes heavily influenced by humans. Fresh Biol, 59(8): 1755-1767.

Ger, K.A., L.-A. Hansson and M. Lürling. 2014. Understanding cyanobacteria‐zooplankton interactions in a more eutrophic world. Fresh Biol, 59(9): 1783-1798.

Yuan, L.L., A.I. Pollard, S. Pather, J.L. Oliver and L. D’Anglada. 2014. Managing microcystin: identifying national‐scale thresholds for total nitrogen and chlorophyll a. Fresh Biol, 59(9): 1970-1981.

Fundamental and Applied Limnology/Archiv für HydrobiologieCarey, C.C., K.L. Cottingham, N.G. Hairston and K.C. Weathers, Jr. 2014. Trophic state mediates the effects of a large colonial cyanobacterium on phytoplankton dynamics. Fundamental Appl Limnol/Archiv für Hydrobiol, 184(4): 247-260.

Human and Ecological Risk AssessmentMastitsky, S.E., A.Y. Karatayev and L.E. Burlakova. 2014. Parasites of aquatic exotic invertebrates: identification of potential risks posed to the Great Lakes. Human and Ecol Risk Assess, 20(3): 743-763.

International Journal of Water Resources DevelopmentMitchell, B., C. Priddle, D. Shrubsole, B. Veale and D. Walters. 2014. Integrated water resource management: lessons from conservation authorities in Ontario, Canada. Internat J Water Resour Develop, 30(3): 460-474.

Journal of the American Water Resources AssociationKaushal, S.S., P.M. Mayer, P.G. Vidon, R.M. Smith, M.J. Pennino, T.A. Newcomer, S. Duan, C. Welty and K.T. Belt. 2014. Land use and climate variability amplify carbon, nutrient, and contaminant pulses: a review with management implications. J Amer Water Resour Assoc, 50(3): 585-614.

Dreps, C., A.L. James, G. Sun and J. Boggs. 2014. Water balances of two Piedmont headwater catchments: implications for regional hydrologic landscape classification. J Am Water Resour Assoc, 50(4): 1063-1079.

Journal of Applied EcologyPoikane, S., R. Portielje, M. Berg, G. Phillips, S. Brucet, L. Carvalho, U. Mischke, I. Ott, H. Soszka and J. Van Wichelen. 2014. Defining ecologically relevant water quality targets for lakes in Europe. J Applied Ecol, 51(3): 592-602.

Journal of Applied ToxicologyRoegner, A.F., B. Brena, G. González‐Sapienza and B. Puschner. 2014. Microcystins in potable surface waters: toxic effects and removal strategies. J Applied Toxicol, 34(5): 441-457.

Journal of Environmental Science and HealthVijayaraghavan, K., U.M. Joshi, H. Ping, S. Reuben and D.F. Burger. 2014. In situ removal of dissolved and suspended contaminants from a eutrophic pond using hybrid sand-filter. J Environ Sci Health, 49(10): 1176-1186.

Journal of Fish BiologyJacobsen, L., H. Baktoft, N. Jepsen, K. Aarestrup, S. Berg and C. Skov. 2014. Effect of boat noise and angling on lake fish behaviour. J Fish Biol, 84(6): 1768-1780.

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