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In the late 1960s, my great-grandparents visited a friend at his vacation house on Lake Oscawana in Putnam Valley, New York. At the time, this friend owned two adjacent properties, one of which was up for sale. He invited my great-grandparents up for a visit, hoping they would purchase the pristine property. While visiting, my great-grandparents fell in love with the lake and decided to buy the country house, picturing how much their son (my grandfather) and his children (my mom and siblings) would enjoy being there. Back then, crystal-clear water from the lake supplied drinking water for the area. The lake provided its residents with many recreational uses, such as boating, fishing, and swimming. Today, however, Lake Oscawana is nothing like that. Its greenish, murky waters aren't as pleasurable to swim in, and slimy green algae can often be found floating in the water, interfering with the clarity of the lake. "Water clarity improved as Oscillatoria [algae] numbers decreased..." says limnologist George Knoecklein in his Lake Oscawana Monitoring Report 2000. Lake Oscawana, a 386-acre lake, has the symptoms of a dying lake. By doing this project, I wanted to find out why and how Lake Oscawana has changed to become this way. Is there anything we can do to prevent this process or to help make the lake better? To investigate these questions, I journeyed to Lake Oscawana to try and find the answers. |
 Lake Oscawana It was a cold day in November when my dad and I set out in our two kayaks on Lake Oscawana. We decided to stay close to the shore since the water was shallower and clearer. It was easier to see fish and collect plant samples from the water. We explored three different sections of the lake: a cove, an area with many houses, and an area next to a forest. We had decided to start in the calm cove. I quickly realized that there was a lot of plant life in the water, more than I had seen in any other lake. This is a symptom of eutrophication, a process in which chemicals, such as phosphorous and nitrogen from fertilizers and road runoff, enter a lake and feed on phytoplankton, one-celled algae, causing them to bloom and rapidly multiply. This abundance of phytoplankton gives the lake its murky green color. |
        
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