New York State CSLAP Program Effectiveness at Achieving Water Quality Improvement

Abstract

This study intended to evaluate the performance of the 262 Lakes that participate in the New York State Citizen Statewide Lake Assessment Program (CSLAP), to determine if CSLAP participation could be used as a surrogate indicator of lake water quality improvement. In order to determine the directionality of sustained quality change over time, only those lakes for which CSLAP data had been continuously collected for 5-or more years were investigated, which amounted to 68% of the total number of participating lakes (n=178). While approximately 1/3 of these continuously-monitored lakes showed improvement in the amount of Chlorophyll-A over their monitoring period (n=59), less than half as many showed improvement in clarity (n=24). Unfortunately, very little correlation was shown to exist between these two standard measures of eutrophication, with only 8% lakes exhibited simultaneous improvement in both measures (m=14). These data suggest either that Chlorophyll-A readings may be more prone to Type-1 errors in through this program, or that Clarity, could be more prone to Type-2 errors. As a result, this study considered more closely only those 14 continuously-monitored lakes which showed improvement on both measures as well as 6 other lakes which degraded in both measures. These lakes were then statistically analyzed to determine any differences between the two groups. Statistical testing determined that there is no statistical difference between these two groups. These results were also analyzed for any spatial autocorrelation, but there were no patterns. Citizen Science programs can be very beneficial to governmental organizations when their results are accurate.