LOCSS Receives 20,000th Lake Height Measurement
Brumley Preserve North Pond
At 7:14 am on October 13, the LOCSS team received the 20,000th lake height measurement! A citizen scientist submitted a measurement for the Brumley Preserve North Pond, just north of Chapel Hill, NC. The pond is located within the George and Julia Brumley Family Nature Preserve, a 613-acre preserve managed by the Triangle Land Conservancy (TLC).
The lake gauge in this pond is located along a popular hiking trail that leads through the preserve, and it has attracted a lot of attention from hikers. The gauge was first installed on November 2, 2020. From that date until the date of this writing, a span of 355 days, we have received a total 415 lake height measurements. That averages to roughly 1.2 measurements per day for the Brumley Preserve North Pond, making it one of the most consistently measured lakes that we are studying.
Russ Bowen is the citizen scientist who submitted the 20,000th measurement. Russ is a volunteer with TLC, and sent his first lake height measurement when he was walking on the preserve trails with his son, shortly after we installed a gauge in the pond. He hikes the trails often and enjoys spotting the beavers that live in the various ponds on the property. Russ has been a dedicated volunteer, providing over 200 lake height measurements for the Brumley Preserve North Pond and Brumley Preserve South Pond. On a recent trip to Mt. St. Helens in Washington, he even sought out the LOCSS gauge in nearby Coldwater Lake and sent in a measurement!
20,000 measurements is a milestone that we are very excited to have reached, and it came sooner than we could have expected, considering we just received our 10,000th measurement in March of 2021. It took about 49 months to get our first 10,000 lake height measurements, but has only taken about 7 months to get our next 10,000 lake height measurements. This rapid growth is due to our continued expansion to include new lakes in our study, notably in New Hampshire, and Bangladesh among others.
This milestone is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists like Russ and local partners around the world. We consider ourselves fortunate to work alongside so many wonderful individuals, and are extremely thankful for them. We are looking forward to continuing our shared work and learning more about our lakes!
LOCSS News
We share stories about the lakes in our study, our partners and volunteer citizen scientists, as well as interesting results from our research.
