UNH Limnology Class Visits Province Lake | Province Lake Association

If you were around the lake on the 3rd of September in the afternoon, you may be asking why were there 3 pontoon boats tied together and anchored in the middle of the lake and who are all those college age people with orange life jackets on those boats? Before we answer those questions, we at the PLA need to first give a huge thank you to fellow members Bill Brady, Mary McLoughlin, Laurie Grenier, and Marion & Tony Chouinard for the use of their pontoon boats. Bill & Mary and Laurie just gave us the keys to use their boats and Marion actually also volunteered her time to pilot her boat … THANK YOU!

Now for those questions … The answer is quite simple … the boats were carrying about 10 UNH students, 2 UNH professors, 2 UNH teaching assistant as well as representatives from the PLA, AWWA and NH DES. The UNH attendees were all part of Dr. Jim Haney’s and Dr. Alan Baker’s Field Limnology class and they were gathering samples and doing all sorts of tests on Province Lake.

Dr. Haney instructs a student on how to conduct a test.

The students worked diligently on completing tests while at the lake as well as gathering samples for further analysis back at the UNH labs. They were testing for Total phosphorus, lake water microcystin toxins, Chlorophyll-a, phytoplankton and zooplankton, dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, Secchi disk depth, tissue analysis of mussels and fish, and they took a core sample of the lake bottom. I am sure there were other things also being tested for. All of this data will be used first for the students and their course requirements, but will also be supplied to the PLA so we can in turn use the data in the Watershed Management Plan modeling that is being conducted by FB Environmental. This was a great opportunity for the lake and we thank Dr.’s Haney and Baker for using our lake as part of their studies. Following are photo’s from the day … and more photo’s can be seen in the Photo’s section of the website.