Abstract
Ecoregion-based phosphorus "criteria" that reflect the diversity of lake condition, varying from deep pristine lakes in the north to shallow hypereutrophic lakes in the south, were developed by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) in the late 1980s. Since then the criteria, including several refinements, have been widely used for local, state, and federal lake watershed management efforts in Minnesota. More recently, the criteria have been used to define thresholds for Clean Water Act Section 303(d) listing of nutrient-impaired lakes and are being advanced as lake standards to protect a wide diversity of beneficial uses. This paper summarizes the evolution of these criteria and describes data and research used in their development. A weight-of-evidence approach describes how this information was used to refine the criteria values.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 282-297 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Lake and Reservoir Management |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank the following: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency management for their support of this work and the contributions of numerous staff. Our partners – Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (particularly Dennis Schupp); the Science Museum of Minnesota; the U.S. EPA for financial support via nutrient criteria development grants; USEPA Corvallis ERL for technical assistance; and many county and local staff who provided data and encouragement. Lastly, we thank Dr. G. Dennis Cooke and two anonymous reviewers for their challenging comments that vastly improved the manuscript.
Keywords
- ecoregions
- eutrophication
- nutrient criteria
- water quality standards
