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Finger Lakes Institute reports decade of buoy data from Owasco Lake, highlights seasonal temperature and oxygen trends
Summary
Lisa Plekner of the Finger Lakes Institute briefed the Cayuga County Legislature on the institute’s Owasco Lake buoy program, describing measurement methods, a longer 2024 deployment window and public data access while stressing the work’s role in guiding watershed remediation and project timing.
Lisa Plekner, director of the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, told the Cayuga County Legislature that the institute’s long‑running buoy monitoring program on Owasco Lake now yields enough continuous records to look at decadal trends in surface temperature and seasonal water‑column dynamics.
The buoy, deployed in one of the lake’s deepest basins (about 150 feet), uses a Yellow Springs International multiparameter sonde to collect profiles roughly every 1.5 meters twice daily. Plekner said the system measures temperature, chlorophyll (a proxy for phytoplankton), turbidity and dissolved oxygen, and a wiper cleans sensors twice daily. The institute maintained a notably longer 2024 deployment than in 2023, putting the buoy in the water April 1 and keeping it in place through nearly Thanksgiving.
The data matter because thermal stratification controls nutrient and oxygen exchange between…
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