Chemistry of lakes in designated wilderness areas in the western United States

Abstract

A synoptic survey of 719 lakes representing an estimated 10,393 lakes in mountainous areas of the western United States was conducted in autumn 1985. Nearly two-thirds of the study lakes were located in wilderness areas or national parks and were sampled by ground access. The results of a comparability study of 45 wilderness lakes accessed by helicopter and ground crews indicated that the data were generally indistinguishable, making it possible to use data from lakes sampled by ground crews without modification. Wilderness lakes had lower acid neutralizing capacity (ANC), base cations, sulfate, and dissolved organic carbon than nonwilderness lakes throughout the West. The highest estimated number (849) and percentage (42.1) of low ANC (≤50 μeq L(-1)) wilderness lakes were located in California; the lowest number (66) was located in the Southern Rockies. The Sierra Nevada contained an estimated 808 low ANC lakes, representing the largest subpopulation of low ANC lakes associated with an individual mountain range in the West. Wilderness lakes in selected geographic areas of the Rocky Mountains generally contained higher concentrations of major ions than lakes in the far West and the concentrations generally increased from the Northern to the Southern Rockies. Comparison of wilderness lakes in the West with lakes in the Adirondack Park, New York, and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area/Voyagers National Park in Northeastern Minnesota showed that western lakes are highly sensitive resources that currently exhibit little evidence of anthropogenic acidification. Although wilderness lakes do not exhibit symptoms of chronic acidification, short-term depression of pH and ANC from snowmelt and thunderstorms occur and episodic acidification influenced by anthropogenic sources cannot be discounted on the basis of this survey.