Phosphorus is widely regarded as the primary cause of consistent annual algae blooms in
many parts of Lake Champlain, and as a result, reduced tributary phosphorus loads have become
a primary indicator of management success. However, the existing monitoring programs in the
Basin function primarily to confirm that there are fewer algae blooms and lower phosphorus
loading rates, and so an ability to understand the observed lack of progress over the past 20 years
is beyond the scope of the currently available data. Therefore, in addition to a lack of consistent
progress toward phosphorus loading management goals, there is relatively little concrete
information explaining why tributary loading rates have not decreased as expected, relative to
management efforts to-date.
In 2009, as the LCBP Steering and Technical Advisory Committees began the third
update of Opportunities for Action (OFA), the LCBP’s management plan, these committees
formalized a desire to develop an adaptive management framework that could be applied to the
phosphorus management initiatives outlined in OFA. In particular, the Steering Committee was
interested in using an adaptive management approach to make further management progress
while helping to shed light on the answers to several basic questions about the relationship
between the management actions taken so far in each pollution sector and the “universe of need”
in those sectors, about which management actions are the most effective and the most costeffective
for achieving reductions in phosphorus loading, about what levels of phosphorus
reduction could be achieved if the entire “universe of need” were to be managed, and about how
filling major existing knowledge gaps could improve decision-making around which
management initiatives to pursue.
To this end, the specific aims of this project were four-fold: