DNR Projects
Lake Julia Lake Association receives $7,125 DNR grant, partners with Nicolet to keep Lake Julia healthy
Posted Monday, Aug. 5, 2002
The Lake Julia Lake Association and Nicolet College have partnered to preserve the overall health of Lake Julia with the help of a $7,125 grant the lake association recently received from the Department of Natural Resources.
The money will fund the first phase of the Lake Julia Stewardship Project, a long-term effort that will study numerous ecological components in and around the lake. The initial work will consist of mapping and assessing the important wetlands in the Lake Julia watershed with a goal of maintaining and hopefully even improving the already good ecosystem health of the 238-acre lake just south of Rhinelander, says Harry Helwig, president of the Lake Julia Lake Association.
Field ecologists Dave Tiller and Beth Rogers worked with Nicolet science students Scott Hamilton, Teresa Arnold and Melissa Hamilton on the wetlands portion of the Lake Julia Stewardship Project. "Virtually every lake in the Northwoods, including Lake Julia, is coming under increasing pressure from a variety of different sources," Helwig says. "Lake Julia today is in good shape and this project is part of a long-term approach that will help keep the lake healthy for generations to come."
The First Phase
The first phase will consist of mapping the significant wetlands around Lake Julia, assessing the current environmental health of these wetlands, identifying potential threats to these areas, and providing recommendations on ways to improve degraded wetlands and better protect those that are deemed as threatened.
The lake association will use the DNR grant money to hire environment consultant Dean Premo, Ph.D., and his firm White Water Associates, of Amasa, Mich., to participate in many technical and educational aspects of the project.
According to Premo, healthy wetlands:
- collect and filter water that seeps down to recharge groundwater aquifers. This clean groundwater then enters the lake through springs in the lake bed.
- significantly reduce the amount of sediment entering a lake through surface water run-off. If too much sediment enters a lake, the gritty deposit can quickly blanket prime fish spawning areas on a lake bed, leading to significant reductions in fish populations. Lake sedimentation can also cover other lakeshore habitats used by insects, amphibians and other wildlife, which play an important role in a lake's food chain and add to the overall biotic diversity of a lake ecosystem;
- trap excess nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen - the main culprits that cause algae blooms. Along with being unsightly, algae blooms can consume large amounts of dissolved oxygen in the water column - a condition that causes respiratory stress to fish and in the worst cases can cause significant die-offs.
Premo and staff from White Water Associates will be working closely with science students and staff at Nicolet College's Rhinelander campus, which sits along the eastern shore of Lake Julia. Together, they'll visit wetlands in the Lake Julia watershed to map and assess the health and threats to each of these areas.
The lake association plans on applying for additional DNR grants in the future to look at other environmental actors that are important to keeping the lake habitat healthy. The grants are made available through DNR's Lake Management Planning Grant Program, which is funded entirely from a portion of the state excise tax on motorboat gasoline. For more information about grant program, including how to apply for a grant, contact Jennifer Wudi, DNR lake management coordinator, at (715) 365-8900.