Historical Water Quality Data for Moon Lake

Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) for Moon Lake, we have a NYSDEC boat launch present. That means that our little lake is a priority for water quality monitoring, and that CSLAP isn't the only source of data

The oldest data publicly available comes from a 1996 report that pulls data from as far back as 1979. The full document can be found by using the NYSFOLA website CSLAP report search feature here: https://nysfola.org/cslap-report-search/. Parameters outlined in the report include temperature, transparency, conductivity, pH, color, phosphorus levels, nitrogen levels, and chlorophyll a measurements.

Conclusions drawn from the above mentioned report include the following:

The above table shows the results of Moon Lake's CSLAP testing, along with the parameters for classifying lakes as eutrophic, mesotrophic, and oligotrophic.

• Moon Lake is a eutrophic lake. This means that the lake is highly productive and the water contains high concentrations of minerals and nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen. These nutrients feed plant life in the lake, resulting in  Eutrophic lakes typically have low concentrations of dissolved oxygen, which means that the water quality is generally poor. This should come as no surprise, given the algal blooms we see on an annual basis, which often include fish die-offs. One of the biggest concerns for our lake is it becoming hypertrophic, which would create dead zones beneath the surface, suffocating aquatic life.
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