While some non-native species can be harmless to the environment, others can wreak havoc. When a non-native species easily out-competes native species, the non-native species can become invasive. Invasive species choke out native species and can collapse entire food chains if they get out of hand. Aquatic invasive species can impact wildlife, plant life, and our quality of life. Because Moon Lake is small and relatively secluded, our lake is somewhat isolated from many would-be invasive species. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't have any invasive species. The number and types of invasive species in our lake are important metrics for measuring the health of the lake. The MLPC is working with the New York State Federation of Lake Associations (NYSFOLA) to help figure out what kind of invasive species we have in Moon Lake, but we can't do it alone! We need some citizen scientists to examine the kinds of aquatic plant life they see around the lake and to help report invasi...
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 a...
Calling all volunteers! The Moon Lake Preservation Council would like to do sampling again this year as this information is crucial to improve our water quality. As we restarted water sampling in 2022 the program needs to be ongoing to give us the statistical ability to assess our waterbody as there can be variability in water quality from year to year. We plan to look at the 2022 Moon Lake data and compare it to historical data, but we need ongoing sampling for the current data to be meaningful. With that said we are looking for volunteers to go through sampling training prior to the 2023 testing season. Volunteers would help the board in the event we are unable to test on one of the intervals. We will be sampling the lake 8 times across the summer season and expect it to take approximately an hour per sampling. We appreciate Chris and Peg participating in 2022 sampling work. Since Chris and Peg are unable to sample in 2023 we are asking for new volunteers! The more people we ha...
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