Monitoring

Aquatic plant management: monitoring

What is monitoring?

Monitoring is important to aquatic weed management efforts. Aquatic plant monitoring routinely looks at aquatic plant populations (e.g., size, species). Monitoring assesses where the target invasive lake weed species is at. It also looks at the beneficial native lake plant communities in the water body. Knowing the changes in lake plants helps show the following:

1) whether control efforts are needed

2) whether they are effective

Benefits and drawbacks of monitoring

There are many benefits of monitoring. Most monitoring programs include a water quality part. This helps show the overall health and safety of the lake. To aquatic plant management, monitoring gathers the status and location of aquatic plant populations. It also tells stakeholders of changes in aquatic plant populations (like expansion, or new water plants). Understanding how the plants change will inform potential control strategies. For example, a large increase in aquatic plants in a specific area near the shoreline may be due to a leaking septic tank. Monitoring the nutrient levels and plant status may help show this issue. This may prevent a costly aquatic herbicide treatment. Finding a new species may be a chance to remove it before it spreads. At least it saves time and money controlling it while it's a small population. The drawback of monitoring is that it needs a combination of effort or cost. Stakeholders can monitor for low cost, but it requires time. A professional service provider can be hired to do the monitoring, but at a higher cost.

How to conduct lake weed monitoring?

Monitoring can be done by the lake group as a standalone effort. Or monitoring can occur as part of a statewide monitoring network. While an independent effort may be flexible, doing it as part of a larger program offers benefits. These programs, such as the Wisconsin Citizen Lake Monitoring Network, offer technical assistance, materials, and training that alleviate the need for the lake group to develop these components themselves. These programs include a variety of water quality measurements. They also include an aquatic invasive species part that will help track the growth and spread of aquatic plants.

Who does the monitoring?

Many lakes join a statewide network. These provide materials, training, and general assistance to those around the lake and want to help. Another way is to hire a service provider to do the monitoring. The cost of a consultant depends on lake size and what the monitoring will measure (e.g., water quality data, aquatic plants).