Link to Contracting Party: The Fund for Lake George (FLG)
2011 Current Milfoil Progress
The following are interactive maps showing all Eurasian milfoil harvest locations. Our crew takes GPS points over each location where a plant or plants are harvested, that data is then processed to create these maps. Viewers can change the map background using the drop down menu in the top right corner. Double clicking on the map surface will zoom in one level centering on the point where you click. You can click and drag to move around on the map as well. There is a scale bar in the bottom left as well as zoom and pan tools on the left side of each map.
Current Total harvest map
Weeks 10 & 11 harvest map (Weeks of 9/5 and 9/12)
For the Weeks 10 & 11 Harvest Summary click here
Weeks 7 , 8 & 9 harvest map (Weeks of 8/15, 8/22 and 8/29)
For the Week 7 Harvest Summary click here
For the Week 8 Harvest Summary click here
For the Week 9 Harvest Summary click here
Weeks 3 – 6 harvest map (Weeks of 6/20, 6/27, 7/11, and 7/18)
For the Weeks 3-4 Harvest Summary click here
For the Weeks 5-6 Harvest Summary click here
Weeks 1 & 2 harvest map (Weeks of 6/6/11 – 6/17/11)
For the Weeks 1 and 2 Harvest Summary click here
Asian Clam Project 2011
Lake George Asian Clam Eradication Project
On April 25th AIM began work on a massive benthic matting project on Lake George. The goal of the project was to smother a recently (2010) discovered population of invasive Asian clams. The mats were placed flat on the lake bottom with 1 foot overlaps to “smother” the clams by depriving them of dissolved oxygen.
The mats were each 7 feet wide by 50 feet long and came rolled up on pallets.
Each mat was then weighed down to the lake bottom with 31 pieces of rebar in 5' lengths.
AIM divers would unroll the mats in their precise locations while weighing them down with the rebar. Below is a mat being unrolled. Areas with mats already placed give the water a light green color.
By May 21st, AIM had placed roughly 850 mats on the lake bottom including in and around numerous docks in the infested area encompassing some 5.5 acres of lake bottom. Scientists from the Darrin Freshwater Institute will be monitoring the effectiveness of the mats by taking dissolved oxygen samples from some 200 mats with sampling ports installed. It is hoped that this project will wipe out the vast majority of the clams.
2010 Lake-wide Swim Coverage
2010 East Shore Area
2010 Bolton Area Harvested Milfoil
Northwest Bay Area Harvested Milfoil
2010 Lake George Village Area Harvested Milfoil
2010 saw continued success in the overall control of Eurasian milfoil on the lake. AIM swim teams were able to cover far larger areas while still re-swimming all areas harvested in 2009. Densest growth was found in the Lake George Village area, Dunham’s Bay, Harris Bay, a small site in Northwest Bay and on the rocky shoal in Basin Bay.
One particular success story was Huddle Bay where in 2009 over 100,000 mature, bushy plants were removed over a period of a week and a half. In 2010 the crew was able to sweep the bay fully in two days and did a 1/2 day follow up sweep removing a total of 25,000 young plants with fewer stems and smaller root masses.
2009 Milfoil Removal on Lake George
In late August of 2009 the Fund for Lake George (FLG) contracted with AIM for four weeks with an eight diver crew. The intent was to clear out many areas of milfoil infestation previously mapped and described by the Lake George Park Commission around the Bolton Landing area of the lake including several islands and the heavily infested Huddle Bay. In the end all of this was completed allowing the AIM team to shift focus to the southern end of the lake in the village of Lake George where a large, dense and old bed of milfoil existed. A fifth week was added with only five divers to continue to reduce the density of the southern bed.
The results of the project are best described by Peter Bauer, Executive Director of the Fund for Lake George in his year-end hand harvesting report to the Adirondack Park Agency (APA):
“The FUND is pleased by the results of this 5-week project. Over 252,000 plants are estimated to have been removed, including some 1,700 bags, and over 21 tons of EWM. This project tackled three of the biggest, most dense sites in Huddle Bay and the Village Bay known for EWM infestation on Lake George. In addition another seven dense sites were cleared. Ten clear or moderate sites were cleared and 69 panels of benthic barrier were removed from the south end of Huddle Bay (site 20). The FUND estimates that xxx acres, some xx% of the Lake George littoral zone th