This year, IISD-ELA is proud to have taken part in the annual Great Secchi Dip-in initiative! Every summer, volunteers from across North America head out to their local water bodies to take part in this citizen science effort to track long-term changes to freshwater. Organized by the North American Lake Management Society, the Secchi Dip-In asks these volunteers to take water clarity readings, and then upload their findings to an online database. The organizers of the Dip-In ask volunteers to take these measurements using a Secchi disk, which is a small disk attached to a rope that can easily be used to measure water transparency. Since 1984, this initiative has resulted in over 41,000 Secchi recordings being added to the database. Together, this information helps researchers track changes to our freshwater over long periods of time, and across large geographical areas.
This summer, high school students taking part in a field course at IISD-ELA were happy to contribute to the Secchi Dip-In by taking readings and adding them to the online database. While on a canoeing trip portion of the field course, the students stopped on lakes 259, 377 and 659 to take their Secchi measurements. In doing so, the students had an opportunity to contribute to long-term environmental monitoring efforts, while also taking the time to understand what factors contribute to water clarity, and what that means for the health of our lakes. In the future, other students can continue to measure these lakes to help understand how freshwater is changing over time.
You can learn more about the Great Secchi Dip-In at http://www.secchidipin.org/.