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Be a Volunteer Lake Monitor Requirements | Data | Sign Up | Manual | Lakes Please note: We are not recruiting volunteers at this time. Thank you. "This is a great program and it's good to see our tax dollars put to such excellent use. The staff is extremely knowledgeable, very accessible and quick to respond to questions and concerns." ~Burt and Marty Sweet, Lake McDonald Volunteers Partners in Environmental Stewardship As part of the Lake Monitor Program, citizens volunteer to collect valuable data for more than 50 small lakes in King County. Volunteer Lake Monitors serve as the eyes and ears of the Lake Stewardship Program, alerting staff to problems and interesting events on their individual lakes. By collecting information on lake level, water quality, and aquatic plants, we can better understand how individual lakes work and how best to preserve their quality. Lake monitoring results are used to: gather baseline data; assess long-term trends; estimate seasonal or water column variability; identify problems and propose management solutions; and educate and provide long-term stewardship opportunities. Data collected by volunteers are reported informally in King County's quarterly newsletter, The Lake Steward, and formally in the annual Lake Monitoring Report. So You Want to be a Volunteer Lake Monitor? Being a Volunteer Lake Monitor is fun and very rewarding for the right person. Before you decide to volunteer, answer these three questions: Do you live on a lake or nearby with good access? Do you have a small boat or have access to one? Can you commit to either a few minutes every day, a couple of hours once a week year round, or a couple of hours every other week from April through October? If the time commitment or logistics are too difficult but you're still interested, you may be an ideal back-up volunteer. If you've answered yes to all three questions, read on! Lake Stewardship Program volunteers commit to one of two levels of data collection -- or sometimes both. Below are the descriptions of the two levels. Level I Level I volunteers collect physical data from a lake year round. Daily, they record precipitation amounts and lake levels, and once a week they take a boat to the middle of their assigned lake to measure water temperature and clarity. All equipment is provided, including data sheets that the volunteers send to us after they have been filled out at the end of each month. Level II From April to October, Level II monitors collect water samples from the middle of the lake every other weekend. Program staff pick up the samples for delivery to the King County Environmental Lab, where they are analyzed for a variety of chemical and biological parameters. All equipment is provided. Back-Up Many of our current volunteers need back-up volunteers who act as temporary substitute when the assigned volunteer is unavailable. Physical and Chemical Lake Monitoring Level I volunteers collect physical data on a daily and weekly basis. These include: lake level precipitation Secchi depth (clarity measurement) temperature Level II collect physical and chemical data bi-weekly May through October. Chemical Data Water samples are collected and analyzed for: total phosphorus total nitrogen chlorophyll a phytoplankton Physical Data Level II volunteers also collect: Secchi depth (clarity measurement) temperature Become a Volunteer Lake Monitor Please note: We are not recruiting volunteers at this time. Thank you. If you are interested in monitoring a lake as a participant in the program described above, please call or email Michael Murphy at 206-296-8008. 2008 Volunteer Lake Monitor Sampling Manual Read the Volunteer Lake Monitor Sampling Manual for staff contacts, sampling instructions, sampling schedules, a glossary and references to additional resources.

For questions about information on this page, please contact Sally Abella at 206- 296-8382. For questions about the Water and Land Resources Web Site, please contact Fred Bentler, webmaster. Updated: May 1, 2008

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