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O’Neill School’s Limnology Lab vital to monitoring health of state’s lakes, preparing students

Jul 26, 2024

The Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs' Limnology Lab monitors Indiana's public lakes for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Summer interns Aiden Baker, left, and Ella Jasnieski, right, collect samples from Yellowwood Lake during a training session in June while lab manager Megan Gokey observes. Photo by Jessica Corry, O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs

The important job of monitoring the health of Indiana’s public lakes has been entrusted by a state agency to Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs for 35 years. In the process, many student interns have participated in this task, collected vital data and subsequently applied the knowledge and skills they gained to professional roles across the country.

The Indiana Clean Lakes Program, a water monitoring and education program, started in 1989 in partnership with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Water Quality. The program is administered through a grant to the O’Neill School, and the school’s Limnology Lab, which studies bodies of fresh water, leads the monitoring efforts.

“Our resources are invaluable. We all need water; it’s essential. If we don’t monitor the lakes then we don’t know the impact we’re having,” said Sarah Powers, the Limnology Lab director since 2022. “Not only is there a public health benefit, but also it’s an opportunity to educate about water ecosystems.”

IU is one of just a handful of universities to perform lake water testing for a statewide monitoring program, Powers said. Each summer the lab typically has six interns that collect and analyze samples from 80 lakes statewide. The lab also uses citizen volunteers that it trains to collect multiple samples from an additional 50 or more lakes to provide a broader data profile of lake status across the state.

“It’s amazing and fantastic that the state has entrusted such an important goal to us, and that we can utilize this program as a way to train the next generation to understand how the monitoring process works,” said Powers, a former summer intern herself.

Trained for the task

The federal Clean Water Act requires states to report on the trophic status — or biological productivity — and trends of all public lakes in Indiana, and requires states to report on the status of how lakes and reservoirs are meeting designated uses, said Barry Sneed, Indiana Department of Environmental Management public information officer. Because of the equipment and staffing required for the monitoring, it wouldn’t be feasible for IDEM alone to monitor the same number of lakes. IU’s efforts supplement the department’s river and stream monitoring and help spread communication and awareness through their education and outreach efforts and volunteer monitoring.

“It is a very collaborative and supportive partnership,” Sneed said, noting that IDEM provides financial and technical support while IU supplies the vital data.

About 200 students have been trained for lake monitoring since IU took on the duties. Undergraduate and graduate students are hired for the 11-week paid internship that prepares them to be water resource professionals. Training starts in June and by the fifth week interns are ready for their first overnight trip in the field to collect samples. The internship has helped students land jobs with federal and state agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and IDEM, and as consultants.

Limnology Lab lake monitoring

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Limnology Lab Director Sarah Powers, center, instructs summer interns during training on the IU Bloomington campus in June 2024. Photo by...
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Training involves learning how to use a variety of instruments and technology needed for collecting samples, and how to test samples according to EPA standards. The interns also learn how to operate a boat, haul it and put it in the water, and how to troubleshoot problems such as the boat’s motor stopping unexpectedly, said Megan Gokey, the Limnology Lab manager.

Volunteers are trained at their lakes on how to use the collection equipment, and after samples are collected, they are shipped to the Limnology Lab. The volunteers are a tremendous help because the number of samples they collect is more than the interns would have the time and capacity for, Gokey said.

Tom Camire, a volunteer since 1990, monitors Koontz Lake in Starke County, where he lives. As a boy in the late 1940s, he recalled the lake’s crystal-clear water. Over time, the water quality has deteriorated, he said. Camire was one of the founding members of the Koontz Lake Environmental Enhancement Committee in 1988, and he took over the lake monitoring for IU from another board member.

“I felt I needed to do something to help whoever was interested, which was IU, to find results and make it cleaner and more usable,” Camire said.

Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer can contact the lab by sending an email to inclp@iu.edu.

Samples from the lakes are used to check for physical aspects such as temperature and oxygen levels, which indicate how well a lake can support biological diversity. Samples are tested for nutrients such as phosphorous, nitrogen and ammonia that impact plant growth and can be an indicator of human-induced change. Algae levels are checked because a high level can lead to algal toxin production, taste and odor issues, and lead to fish kills, Powers said.

Interns go out in teams of two to collect samples, and they rotate time in the field with time in the lab to analyze their samples and those collected by volunteers.

The analysis and results are important. The data is used to inform the condition status of lakes and reservoirs that is reported to the EPA through Clean Water Act requirements, in addition to assessing recreational uses of the lakes and reservoirs and watershed planning efforts.

“These statuses are important in understanding where to focus priorities across the state regarding protection and restoration efforts and may also help inform permitting decisions,” Sneed said.

As a result of the data collected, about 140 of the 1,582 lakes and reservoirs available for sampling are currently on the state’s list of impaired waters.

“We would not understand the overall status of our lakes and reservoirs nearly as well without the data that is provided through IU’s Clean Lakes Program,” he said.

Tremendous preparation

Matt Bubenzer, a 24-year-old graduate student from Indianapolis, is a summer intern for the second year in a row. In the fall semester, he’ll finish master’s degrees in environmental science and public affairs with concentrations in ecology and conservation. His goal is to get a job with a state or federal conservation or fish and wildlife department.

Limnology Lab summer intern Matt Bubenzer. Photo by Kirk Johannesen, Indiana University Limnology Lab summer intern Matt Bubenzer. Photo by Kirk Johannesen, Indiana UniversityThe Limnology Lab internship is beneficial for that goal.

“You can’t effectively conserve aquatic species without knowing what’s in the water and the quality of the water,” Bubenzer said.

Bubenzer said he’s always loved the scenic beauty of lakes and it’s been fun collecting samples at lakes across the state, including some he’d never seen before. He said it’s been a great experience because the internship has been hands-on in both the field and the lab.

“I definitely feel more prepared for a career than without this internship,” he said. “With water sampling we’re following EPA standards to a T. We go through a rigorous process to collect samples correctly and not mess up the results. I think this is preparing me for any environmental career.”

The Limnology Lab summer internship helped Bridget Borrowdale land a job first with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and currently with the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission. She earned two degrees through the O’Neill School’s accelerated master’s program: a Bachelor of Science in public affairs, with a major in environmental management, and a Master of Science in environmental science, with a concentration in water resources. She interned with the Limnology Lab in 2012 and 2014.

The lab component of an undergraduate limnology course clinched for Borrowdale what she wanted to do for a career.

“We spent our time venturing out to local waterways to learn field sampling techniques, performing lab analyses of water chemistry and learning fish, macroinvertebrate and plankton taxonomy under the microscope,” she said. “There was something so gratifying about being able to paint a picture of a lake, stream or river from start to finish with data we had collected and processed ourselves.”

That led to Borrowdale reaching out to the summer internship program director about participating, and she was the only undergraduate intern in 2012. She said her internship two years later as a grad student was even more exciting, and collecting water samples, analyzing the water chemistry and identifying plankton species was rewarding.

After graduating, she worked three years for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a biological science technician monitoring Asian carp populations on the Illinois River and Chicago-area waterways. As a senior aquatic biologist with the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, she manages the macroinvertebrate program and leads crews on the Ohio River for monitoring of fishes, macroinvertebrates, physical habitat and water quality. The job involves analyzing data to track long-term trends and disseminating results for the public.

Borrowdale said she couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity than the Limnology Lab’s summer internship.

“It gave me a skill set that I use to this day and helped me establish a foundation of confidence in my knowledge and abilities that has been vital for my professional development,” she said.

Author

IU Newsroom

Kirk Johannesen

Communications Consultant, Strategic Communications
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