When you want marine life in America's lakes, the first thing is to make them salty and America is doing an exceptional job of that but the salt didn't come from the ocean; this salt came from the rock salt used by the road crews to deal with snow in the Winter: (Science Daily: North America's freshwater lakes are getting saltier)
Lake Monona, in Madison, WI, is experiencing rising salinity due to nearby roadways and road salt application.
Credit: Hilary Dugan
North America's freshwater lakes are getting saltier due to development and exposure to road salt. A study of 371 lakes published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that many Midwestern and Northeastern lakes are experiencing increasing chloride trends, with some 44% of lakes sampled in these regions undergoing long-term salinization.
- SD
Republicans won't do anything before you can fish for sharks in the Great Lakes but you see the problem exists in almost half of America's lakes already.
Watson: what does road salt do?
It melts some of the ice so it can refreeze as black ice and become much more dangerous. Now you know.
Here's how the salt gets into the lakes.
Chloride trends in 371 freshwater lakes were analyzed. Each lake was larger than 4 hectares in size with at least 10 years of recorded chloride data. The majority of the lakes (284) were located in a North American Lakes Region that includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ontario, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Since the 1940s, the use of road salt to keep winter roads navigable has been escalating. Each year, some 23 million metric tons of sodium chloride-based deicer is applied to North America's roads to melt away snow and ice. Much of this road salt washes into nearby water bodies, where it is recognized as a major source of chloride pollution to groundwater, streams, rivers, and lakes.
- SD
The hell of it is the rock salt doesn't even work that well. Michiganders can tell you how to do it since they drive seventy mph on hard-packed snow but no-one can drive even seven mph on ice. The Rockhouse has long believed the rock salt makes the roads more dangerous.
In lakes, elevated chloride levels have been shown to alter the composition of fish, invertebrates, and the plankton that form the base of the aquatic food web. Aquatic species richness and abundance can decline, and in extreme cases salinization can prevent lakes from mixing -- causing low oxygen conditions that smother aquatic life and reduce water quality.
The study's authors recommend that best lake management practices recognize that shoreline management extends well beyond a lake's perimeter. While many states and municipalities acknowledge the importance of shoreline management, they note that zoning regulations are often only enforced within 300 meters, and many lakes lack the monitoring programs needed to adequately track lake health.
- SD
It would be swell if all the science the Rockhouse brings you is about cool things in the future but this situation needs attention. All of us knew intuitively that salt is a problem but we have not seen previously how much of one.
Well ...
Lake Monona, in Madison, WI, is experiencing rising salinity due to nearby roadways and road salt application.
Credit: Hilary Dugan
North America's freshwater lakes are getting saltier due to development and exposure to road salt. A study of 371 lakes published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that many Midwestern and Northeastern lakes are experiencing increasing chloride trends, with some 44% of lakes sampled in these regions undergoing long-term salinization.
- SD
Republicans won't do anything before you can fish for sharks in the Great Lakes but you see the problem exists in almost half of America's lakes already.
Watson: what does road salt do?
It melts some of the ice so it can refreeze as black ice and become much more dangerous. Now you know.
Here's how the salt gets into the lakes.
Chloride trends in 371 freshwater lakes were analyzed. Each lake was larger than 4 hectares in size with at least 10 years of recorded chloride data. The majority of the lakes (284) were located in a North American Lakes Region that includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ontario, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Since the 1940s, the use of road salt to keep winter roads navigable has been escalating. Each year, some 23 million metric tons of sodium chloride-based deicer is applied to North America's roads to melt away snow and ice. Much of this road salt washes into nearby water bodies, where it is recognized as a major source of chloride pollution to groundwater, streams, rivers, and lakes.
- SD
The hell of it is the rock salt doesn't even work that well. Michiganders can tell you how to do it since they drive seventy mph on hard-packed snow but no-one can drive even seven mph on ice. The Rockhouse has long believed the rock salt makes the roads more dangerous.
In lakes, elevated chloride levels have been shown to alter the composition of fish, invertebrates, and the plankton that form the base of the aquatic food web. Aquatic species richness and abundance can decline, and in extreme cases salinization can prevent lakes from mixing -- causing low oxygen conditions that smother aquatic life and reduce water quality.
The study's authors recommend that best lake management practices recognize that shoreline management extends well beyond a lake's perimeter. While many states and municipalities acknowledge the importance of shoreline management, they note that zoning regulations are often only enforced within 300 meters, and many lakes lack the monitoring programs needed to adequately track lake health.
- SD
It would be swell if all the science the Rockhouse brings you is about cool things in the future but this situation needs attention. All of us knew intuitively that salt is a problem but we have not seen previously how much of one.
Well ...
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