To the untrained eye, lake health may seem most obvious from the surface: the presence of smells, foams or blue-green algae are all indicators Wisconsinites have gotten used to encountering. But one scientist is diving deeper, investigating lake health by combing the lake bottoms searching for other clues: aquatic plants.
Sara Hatleli owns and operates Aquatic Plant and Habitat Services LLC, a business she’s solely operated for twelve years. Hatleli, an aquatic biologist, works with interested local communities to conduct a comprehensive study of a lake’s bottom-dwelling plants, combing for plant diversity, an indicator of lake health. With the help of her summer field technician Andrea Musch, Hatleli will fit in 20 trips to various lakes over the course of the summer. Their field work focuses on lake surveys, invasive species monitoring and plant management for lake groups.
“We go from sample point to sample point in a boat, rake up the aquatic plants, and we take a look at the species present at that sample point. When you do that a few hundred times, you get a really good picture of what the aquatic plant community looks like in that lake,” Hatleli says.
The data of the various species create a moment-in-time snapshot of that lake, and help tell a larger story of aquatic life and overall lake health. Hatleli spends the winter months analyzing the data and building public-facing presentations. “There’s a heck of a lot of time spent just at the computer, crunching data, analyzing data, creating maps and just trying to take this body of information and create a story,” she explained. The story leads to recommendations for a management plan for local community lake groups.
A lake group is generally a group of volunteers whose purpose includes improvement of water quality or public safety on a body of water.
“It could very much just be a group of people around a lake who have a concern,” says Hatleli.
Footage at public meetings shows Hatleli presenting for over an hour, sharing lake-specific data, outlining possibilities for a management plan, facilitating worksheets for group activity and holding one-on-one conversations with the people who have vested interest in their lakes.
“I’m hoping that my impact is promoting the view of aquatic plants in a more positive way, and just seeing how much they benefit us rather than how much they’re in our way,” Hatleli says.
