Are mountain lakes on a trajectory of increasing eutrophication?

Amanda Jayo, USGS NAGT Intern, and Caitlin Charlton, Colorado State University graduate student, setting forth to collect chlorophyll from The Loch, Rocky Mountain National Park. This summer research in Loch Vale Watershed’s long-term ecological research and monitoring watershed, is gathering field data to validate remote sensing of mountain lake productivity. If successful, remote sensing tools can be used to show trophic state for thousands of small remote alpine lakes going forward and possibly going back decades. Our field work is in collaboration with the NASA Develop program, whose four women interns are matching spectral bands for productivity with our measured productivity values.