Getting a Closer Look at Lake Pleasant

Seasonal Botanist Andy Hoff studies Lake Pleasant through a glass-bottomed bucket, which is used to cut down on glare. The electronic gadget in the canoe is a Global Positioning System (GPS), which WPC uses to precisely record the locations of the sampling points. Botanist Steve Grund provides this information:

The closer we look, the more it becomes clear that Lake Pleasant is a very special place, and an important place to do conservation work. In the 1980's, the Natural Heritage Program staff of WPC visited and evaluated seven glacial lakes in northwestern Pennsylvania. The result of this work was the determination that Lake Pleasant was the most appropriate lake to focus our conservation efforts. Lake Pleasant:

· harbors the largest number of aquatic species of concern among the northwest Pennsylvania lakes,
· is associated with exceptional lakeside wetlands including a fen,
· is the glacial lake with the least damaged ecosystem, and
· is the most defensible against outside disturbances.

Lake Pleasant continues to be the only natural lake in western Pennsylvania that has not been invaded with the invasive exotic plant called Eurasian water-milfoil. This plant grows very fast, branches near the surface of the water, and can produce a canopy at the top of the lake that shades out the native species below.

Motorized boats are not allowed at Lake Pleasant. Motor boats chop up aquatic plants. Some species may suffer from this disturbance, but others sprout from the fragments, and actually become more abundant. This leads to changes in the relative abundance of different species, and may account for the fact that in the lakes we have studied that have motor boats, plants such as Elodeas and aiads, as well as Eurasian water-milfoil, tend to dominate certain areas to the near exclusion of any other species. This does not happen at Lake Pleasant, where one can look almost anywhere the water is shallow enough for plants to grow and see a half dozen or more species.

Lake Pleasant's twenty rare plant species, the most for any lake in western Pennsylvania, are doing well, and they have a bright future, thanks to the watershed's landowners and the conservation work that continues out of WPC's Northwest Field Station. Consider visiting Lake Pleasant to see one of the finest examples of what you are accomplishing with your WPC membership.

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