President’s Message — May / June 2019

Sara Peel, NALMS President

Ahh summer – time to love our lakes or as we do at NALMS – celebrate Lakes Appreciation Month and collect and submit our annual Secchi Dip-In reading! Lakes Appreciation Month preparations are in full swing with 14 states (as of this writing) proclaiming July is Lakes Appreciation Month. Check to see if your state is among those participating on our proclamation tracker: https://www.nalms.org/lakes-appreciation-month/. While there, download the fun, kid-friendly Lakes Appreciation-focused BINGO sheet; order t-shirt color-ons for your lakes appreciation event; and learn more about sharing your events, photos, and videos with #LakesAppreciation social media posts. Thank you to our Lakes Appreciation Month sponsors – SOLitude Lake Management and the LaMotte Company!

The Secchi Dip-In program is focused on the transition from our previous Dip-In website and database to a fully-integrated, WQX-based database. NALMS staff are focused on moving the Dip-In website over to the NALMS website, while a core group of NALMS, Oklahoma Water Resources Board, and Cary Institute volunteers and staff are working to providing an excel-based spreadsheet for the entry to 2019 Dip-In data. This spreadsheet will provide an interim option for entering 2019 Dip-In data while we transition from the old database to the WQX-based database. An instructional video and excel template sheet should be posted to the NALMS Dip-In page before the end of June! If you have questions about data entry, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Philip, while Alyssa is happy to share your Dip-In events and photos to NALMS social media. And Kate Wettergreen, our new Secchi Dip-Inter who is housed at the State of Vermont will be reaching out to state monitoring programs of the professional and volunteer variety as she gets settled into her new position in the next few weeks.

Our 2019 Vermont Symposium host committee is finalizing field trip options – those along with a draft conference agenda, draft program, plenary speaker details, Fluid 5K registration information, and hotel room reservation and conference registration information will be posted soon. Concurrently, the 2020 Minnesota host committee is gearing up to provide details for the 40th Annual NALMS symposium – if you have ideas about how NALMS should celebrate our 40thAnniversary, please share those details with NALMS staff or board members.

Now, go out and love your lakes!