Limnology of Lake Champlain

This report serves as an environmental baseline report for Lake Champlain. It assembles all the presently available information concerning the limnology o[ Lake Champlain in a concise manner. Much of the data which has been collected for Lake Champlain, particularly the physical limnology data, is either not published or published in very limited numbers. Much information that has been collected during the past dozen years is still in the form of unanalyzed or only partially analyzed data. Due to these circumstances, the authors decided to include short summaries of much of this unpublished physical limnology data as well as perform some initial analysis and obtain tentative results based on the data. The authors are indebted to many researchers who made the data, unpublished manuscripts, and field notes available for this report and allowed the authors to use it for preliminary analysis and comparison with other work done on Lake Champlain.

This report is divided into three parts; physical limnology, chemical limnology, and biological limnology. These subdivisions are somewhat artificial as many nutrient studies could be considered either chemical or biological and the optical properties could be easily considered in any of the three sections. The system has been used primarily to avoid extensive repetition and aid in conciseness. Cross references appear in the report where it seemed appropriate to the authors.