It was a cool science day on LSC!

Earlier today, members from the Vermont DEC, our limnologist, and Trustees of the LSCA boated to the deepest area on the lake and took a deep core sediment sample.

The sample was then divided up into smaller samples (cookies), and prepped to ship off to two different labs for testing.

One lab will date the samples, and the other will perform a taxonomy of the diatoms in the samples.

This will give us an idea of how the lake has processed phosphorus in the past and will inform future phosphorus reduction goals that would be part of the Lake St. Catherine Watershed Action Plan (https://lakestcatherine.org/lsc-watershed-action-plan).

You can read more about diatoms here: https://diatoms.org/what-are-diatoms

• Diatoms are algae with silica cell walls
• Diatoms produce 20-30% of the air we breathe
• Diatoms produce long-chain fatty acids, and these molecules are food for the entire food web, from zooplankton to aquatic insects to fish.
• Diatoms are particular about the quality of water in which they live, so they are vital for assessment and monitoring biotic condition of waters.

Thank you to all involved for helping to make this happen, including the lake community for donating food shipping containers and freezer packs so the samples could be properly shipped to the labs!

We'll post about the data when it becomes available.