Project Detail

Popple Lake 303d Listing

Purpose

The goal of this project is to collect additional water chemistry on Popple Lake for the development of a TMDL. Sampling will consist of bi-weekly sampling from July through mid-September (5 sample events in total). Temperature, Dissolved Oxygen and Conductance profiles will be taken during each sampling event in addition to epilimnetic and hypolimnetic water chemistry samples. Epilimnetic samples will be collected as a 2 m integrated sample. The bi-weekly summer epilimnetic samples will be analyzed for total phosphorus and chlorophyll-a. The hypolimnetic samples will be analyzed total phosphorus. All sampling will take place during the calendar year 2006 field season. Sampling prior to July 1 2006 has already been approved under an earlier project project. In addition to the water chemistry sampling a single paleocore will be analyzed by bureau of Staff to determine changes in trophic status at over time.

Objective

Popple Lake is on Wisconsin's 303(d) list for impairments due to phosphorus. The in water chemistry data and current land use data will be used along with the Wisconsin Lake Modeling Suite (WiLMS) to characterize the existing load and trophic conditions of the lake. Much of the Popple Lake watershed is either wetland or forested with smaller amounts of agriculture and riparian development. Analysis of other lakes in Chippewa Country has indicated that some may be naturally eutrophic. Analysis of the paleocore will be used in the TMDL goal setting process to separate the anthropogenic inputs to those from natural sources.