Haliburton Lake Community Benthos Biomonitoring Project 2019

Haliburton Lake Community Benthos Biomonitoring Project 2019

Brendan Martin
Joseph Gentile
Hannah Williams
Stephanie Barrie
Julia Herault

Haliburton Lake Cottagers' Association, Lindsay Bevan

Erin McGauley, Environmental Technology

4933

2020

on-line

Haliburton Lake, Haliburton County

Biology, Ecology, Environmental Science, Water Science

Haliburton Lake Cottagers' Association partnered with Fleming College and U-Links to begin determining the health of Haliburton Lake using benthic macroinvertebrates. Two sites were sampled as part of this pilot project in an attempt to begin understanding the health of Haliburton Lake. After only one sampling event it is difficult to determine what the state of Haliburton Lake is with great certainty. Future sampling events will need to be completed and additional sites should be considered in future sampling events in order to gain a better understanding of the broader health of the lake. Based on the sites analyzed in 2019, Haliburton Lake is somewhere in the range of “fair” to “fairly poor” indicating that there is likely some form of organic pollution entering the lake. The extent and location of this pollution is unclear at this time and more sampling will be required to determine if this pollution is human caused; if it is being produced from a single source or more broadly throughout the lake; and whether it is improving, remaining stable, or getting worse as time progresses. At the same time, however, the presence of large numbers of usually sensitive groupings indicates that there are complexities at play in Haliburton Lake that will require further research to understand. It is recommended that sampling continue in subsequent years in order to gain a better understanding of the overall health of the lake and to potentially locate sites that can be improved to better the health of the lake.

U-Links