A group of scientists and representatives of government agencies met this summer in Saratoga Springs with an enormous mission: outline plans for a survey of hundreds of Adirondack Lakes.

The emerging plan hopes to focus on the effects of climate change on Adirondack lakes and would build on the last major survey of Adirondack lakes in the 1980s, which focused on lake acidification and served as a scientific basis for the 1990 federal Clean Air Act amendments.

The Adirondack Council and other advocates are pushing for funding in Albany and Washington D.C. as scientists continue to fine tune the plan.

The proposed survey is called SCALE: survey of climate change and Adirondack lake ecosystems. It aims to collect data on carbon cycling, dissolved oxygen loss, impacts to organisms that live in Adirondack lakes and how climate is influencing harmful algal blooms.

Read more about the plan here.

There has been a lot of other water news in the past week. Tim Rowland has been covering flooding caused by ice jams, which impacted communities in Essex, Warren and Hamilton counties.

Conservation groups are raising concerns about the invasive round goby fish making its way to Lake Champlain and some have called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to keep a lock on the Champlain canal closed this year to prevent the fish species from invading the lake.

I went out on the ice of Lower St. Regis Lake last week with a pair of scientists from the Adirondack Watershed Institute to learn about how lakes are sampled during the winter and a new project to get the public involved in compiling information about ice conditions. Story on its way but you can check out AWI’s new ice observation portal.

Photo: Brendan Wiltse, a senior research scientist at Adirondack Watershed Institute, collects a water sample on Lower St. Regis Lake. Photo by Mike Lynch/Adirondack Explorer

Editor’s note: This first appeared in Zach’s weekly “Water Line” newsletter. Click here to sign up.