Partners & Contributors

The Blue Lakes Program would not have been made possible without the valuable contribution of our partners and others within the lake science community.

Founding Partner

Watersheds Canada is a leader in lake conservation with a core focus on shoreland naturalization and lake-land policy review and input. They have been a supporting partner in this effort, contributing knowledge, time in review, and providing outreach support, since inception.

Additional Partners

U-Links: U-links is a non-profit organization where university and college students are matched with community organizations in the Haliburton area to assist organizations with planning, research, or community service and development projects. Students earn course credits and gain practical experience in their field of study while helping to solve challenges in communities. Many projects focus on valuable environmental skills including aquatic monitoring. U-links has also created Woodlands and Waterways EcoWatch (WWEW) which is a community-based environmental monitoring program. U-Links provides invaluable data for The Land Between region through their environmental monitoring projects.

Lake Science Experts

Here in The Land Between, we are fortunate to have ongoing and recent research on lake health that we have used to support stewardship initiatives. We have also gathered resources from local findings that can help us develop real-world solutions, just like the Blue Lakes Program. We are grateful for the input from Dr. Andrea Kirkwood (Ontario Tech University), Trent University, Kawartha Lake Stewards, Muskoka Watershed Council, Lakehead University and other educational institutes. With their support, we are accessing recent and relevant science to support our stewardship efforts.

Dr. Andrea Kirkwood & The Kirkwood Lab

Dr. Andrea Kirkwood is an Associate Professor at Ontario Tech University, with research and teaching focused on aquatic ecosystems and environmental biology. She has led countless research projects focusing on lake health in regions such as The Land Between and Lake Scugog. Her studies highlight the relationship between urbanization and aquatic health.

Lean more about Dr. Andrea Kirkwood & The Kirkwood Lab's work

More specifically, The Kirkwood Lab has documented and characterized lakes with gradients in pH, alkalinity and nutrients, as well as shoreline development. Here at The Land Between, we use this valuable information to guide our community-based solutions such as the Blue Lakes Program. Today, Dr. Andrea Kirkwood is actively involved in community-based stewardship initiatives.

The Kirkwood Lab is currently supporting graduate students’ research that focuses on lake health in The Land Between. Emily Hassal completed her Master’s thesis which investigated water quality and plankton community patterns as a function of geological and spatial drivers across The Land Between. Emily visited 60 lakes across The Land Between in August of 2019 to sample water quality and plankton communities. She combined her data findings with land use information of each lake to investigate trends of land use and calcium gradient across the region. Overall, her research has provided insight into the important drivers of lake water quality and plankton communities in The Land Between.

Alana Tyner is a Master’s student at The Kirkwood Lab researching long-term water quality, land use, and water hardness in The Land Between. She is investigating calcium, chloride, conductivity, nitrate, phosphorus and temperature in lakes using data from 2002 - 2018. Alana is also using geographic mapping files from the Ontario Government to investigate the relationship between land use and water hardness categories. These parameters are used to determine if water “hardness” has unique water quality characteristics.

Dr. Norman Yan & Friends of the Muskoka Watershed

The Friends of the Muskoka Watershed's mission is to identify environmental threats, develop practical science-based solutions, and connect with policy-makers to put these solutions in place to protect the Muskoka watershed.

Dr Norman Yan is the Secretary & Fundraising Chair at the Friends of the Muskoka Watershed. He completed his MSc and PhD dissertations on the effects of acid rain and metal pollution on Ontario lakes, worked as a research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for 25 years, and worked as a Professor at York University's biology department. He has co-authored over 200 publications on Canadian lakes, with much of his research focused on the Muskoka area.

Learn more about the Friends of the Muskoka Watershed