Moon Lake Preservation Council

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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...

One of the most insidious problems on our lake is Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), which are a kind of algal bloom caused by blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria. Some cyanobacteria release cyanotoxins, which are harmful to other species, including humans and other animals. Cyanotoxins can affect other species simply by coming into contact with them (swimming in contaminated water) or through ingestion (drinking contaminated water, even if it has been treated and filtered). Because of this, it's important that we keep an eye out for HABs in Moon Lake. That's where you come in! HABs can look take on several different appearances. In Upstate New York, they usually look like spilled green paint or pea soup: While green algae algal blooms (shown below) can be gross and a nuisance, they are not dangerous to human health. If you're in doubt over whether something is a HAB or not, report it anyway! The DEC will help make the determination. This season, if you see a suspicious algal bloo...

It's almost lake season! The temperatures are rising, the spring ephemerals are coming up, and soon we'll all be back on the lake! That can only mean one thing...we all have some work to do! Over the next several weeks, we'll be sharing information about different volunteer opportunities with a range of commitment levels. Our first opportunity has the highest commitment level, but it's one of the most important things we can do for our lake (and it doesn't require any special knowledge or training)! One of the tools the Moon Lake Preservation Council uses to guide our efforts is a Lake Management Plan, a comprehensive document with details about our lake, which is required by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to qualify our lake for various grants and other state aid. The most recent Moon Lake Management Plan was developed in the late 90s, and is in serious need of updating! That's where you come in! To make this task more manageable, we...

 Summer isn't quite over yet, but Labor Day is just around the corner! Join us on September 2nd (the Saturday of Labor Day weekend) for our annual meeting! More details can be found in the flyer below (click to enlarge):

  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...

Welcome to the new (and hopefully improved) Moon Lake Preservation Council website! We're glad you're here! This is our brand new website, and it's a work in progress. Feel free to poke around on the various pages. You'll notice that most of the existing posts are individual historical documents regarding water quality. As the website grows, we'll work to dissect the implications of the various reports. More than anything else, this website will be a hub for all the permanent information about Moon Lake and the MLPC. For the most up-to-date information, check out our Facebook page .

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...