The Promise and Potential of Continental-Scale Limnology Using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Lakes Assessment

Abstract

While there are many local and regional sampling efforts in lakes across the U.S., it is often difficult to compile this information into a cohesive framework to make national- or continental-scale conclusions. To address this gap, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency partners with States and Tribes to implement the National Lakes Assessment, which is a national-scale, coordinated lake sampling program. The resulting data include colocated biological, chemical, habitat, and human use measures that are available to the scientific community. We provide a brief overview of the program, describe the data, and discuss some of the ways the results have been used. The availability of a consistent data set of this magnitude is an impressive and unique resource for the limnological community.