What is Winter LakeKeepers?
Winter LakeKeepers allows volunteers to independently monitor lakes or reservoirs for parameters important for understanding lake ecology and health in the winter. The program is well suited to volunteers who ice fish on their favorite lake, but anyone is welcome to join.
Training manuals and monitoring equipment are sent to Winter LakeKeepers volunteers to collect data from lakes or reservoirs. Two different protocols can be followed: a base-level protocol is designed to allow for more time to deliver samples back to ALMS, and an enhanced protocol is designed to collect additional samples that require delivery back to ALMS more quickly.
Depending on which protocol is being followed, equipment provided includes:
- A YSI ProSolo Dissolved Oxygen, Temperature & Conductivity probe (20m or 30m long)
- Nutrient sample bottles
- Phytoplankton (algae) sample bottle
- Isotopes sample bottle
- Chlorophyll-a sample bottle
- Chlorophyll-a filtering kit
- Field sheets
- Instruction guide
- Sampling gloves
- Sample preservatives
- Tape and Weight
Samples are delivered back to the Alberta Lake Management Society office in Edmonton for analysis and reporting. Samples may be shipped to the office, or hand delivered. Once the samples are analyzed, all of the data and field sheet information is uploaded to the Gordon Foundation’s DataStream water quality data portal, and then compiled into a report for each season. Links to the current reports are below:
Winter LakeKeepers is supported with funding from:
Materials for Volunteers:
FIELD MANUAL: Before getting involved with LakeKeepers, new volunteers should review the LakeKeepers instruction guide to understand sampling protocol.
FIELD SHEETS: Volunteers can print additional field sheets if needed, but they will also be provided in the sampling kits.
INFORMED CONSENT: New volunteers must read ALMS ice safety guide. After reading this guide, complete the ice safety quiz and informed consent form here.
WHAT TO DO WITH SAMPLES: Please refer to page 8 and 9 of the sampling instructions to help you manage your sampling kit and samples after sample collection.
PRESERVATIVE MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEETS (MSDS): This file contains the MSDS information for the preservatives used for the G2-preserved bottle (sulfuric acid), and the phytoplankton bottle (Lugol’s Solution: 5% iodine solution and acetic acid).
The members of the steering committee will continue to play a strong role in facilitating and tracking implementation actions. This includes any actions they were responsible for, as well as tracking other committees and sector’s actions and progress made towards achieving the plan’s outcomes. Ongoing communication is essential to successful implementation and achieving outcomes, therefore a regular reporting mechanism could be set up in order to provide regular evaluation of the plan.
Reporting is an essential component of any watershed management planning and implementation process. There are two main types of reporting that should be shared with stakeholders on a regular basis: implementation reporting & effectiveness reporting.
There is no limit to the number or types of lake management actions, but they typically fall into the categories on the right.
Helpful resources
The development of a lake watershed management plan provides the guidance needed to implement activities, but the plan cannot be static. Monitoring the performance of your management actions is essential to understanding whether your goals have been met, and whether further actions are needed. Monitoring and evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of a lake watershed management plan allows assessment of progress towards the goals and objectives of the plan, identification of problems and opportunities, and a collection of critical information required when performing a 5 or 10 year review of the plan.
What has the monitoring results of the plan and of the indicators shown? Is there a need to modify the plan? It is important that the lake watershed management plan does not just sit on a shelf. Information gaps should be addressed, action items need to be managed, completed, and evaluated to best address the needs of the lake. Always keep in mind the vision: if the actions taken are not bringing the lake closer to that vision, then the plan needs to be modified. Consider updating both the state of the watershed and the lake watershed management plans at regular intervals to make sure that the actions taken were achieving the desired outcomes and to evaluate what work still needs to be done.
Once a plan has been approved by all affected sectors and officially endorsed and released by the steering committee, then implementation can begin in full. Action projects can be large and comprehensive, or made smaller by staging projects over time or into modules that can be tackled one at a time. Fundraising is an issue that many community groups may find intimidating, but experience with programs such as the Pine Lake Restoration Program (see 
This graphic describes how the various committees and groups will work and interact together. The circle size depicts the approximate number of people involved, and the circles overlapping indicates that some individuals may reside in all of the circles and participate in multiple committees as part of the planning process. The technical committee is shown as an arrow, indicating that it is independent and has relatively few people, and yet it interacts with all of the groups. This graphic may look different depending on the lake and the people involved, and a detailed structure should be agreed upon and described in the plan’s Terms of Reference (Step 6).