Quality controlled in situ data from multiple locations in Lake Sunapee, NH, USA from the Lake Sunapee Protective Association's Long-term Monitoring Program, 1986-2020

Code and Data Description:

The code contained in this release documents the quality control measures that have been made to collate the data from the Lake Sunapee Protective Association’s (LSPA) Long-term Monitoring Program (LMP) database. The LMP data are collected in conjunction with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ (NH DES) Volunteer Lake Assessment Program (VLAP). The data in this release have been filtered to remove obviously errant data, to flag suspicious data, and to otherwise collate the data for further use.

Background Information:

Lake Sunapee is located in the Sugar River watershed within Sullivan and Merrimack Counties, NH, USA. It is a drainage lake with predominantly muck substrate. It has a surface area of 1667 hectares, 53 kilometers of developed shoreline and a maximum depth of 33.7 meters.

Starting in the 1980s, the LSPA volunteer water quality monitors have been regularly sampling Lake Sunapee’s water in cove and deep sites in Lake Sunapee. This monitoring is made possible by the LSPA. Until 2019, all parameters except dissolved oxygen concentration, saturation, and water temperature (which were measured by a sonde, in-situ) were measured at LSPA’s Water Quality Laboratory at Colby-Sawyer College. Beginning in 2019, a YSI ProDSS multiprobe sonde was used to measure dissolved oxygen concentration and saturation, water temperature, pH, conductivity, and turbidity in-situ. Additional notes about methodology can be found in the README file, any questions about methodology should be directed to the LSPA.

Data Lineage:

All data originated from the LSPA, much of which are also archived by the NH DES VLAP database. At the time of this release, neither database exists as a citable data source with a DOI.

Maintenance:

Data collection is ongoing. There will be future releases approximately annually.