Pretreatment Results of the Fish Lake Project. Fishery and Aquatic CommunityResponses to Mechanical Harvesting of Macrophytes: Evaluating Edge Effect

摘要

The Dane County Lakes and Watershed Commission has the responsibility of planningand managing the county's lakes and waterways. Part of this responsibility, through the Public Works offices, is the management of nuisance aquatic plants which includes the operation and maintenance of the county's aquatic weed harvesters. As a cooperator, Dane Co. Public Works staff (Mr. Ken Koscik and Mr. Joe Yaeger) designed and built the deep-cutting weed harvester used to cut the deep channels on Fish Lake and on the other treatment lakes for the Littoral Zone Fisheries Project. This informal report covers the pretreatment years of the Fish Lake Project, and an immediate posttreatment (within days) evaluation of the impacts and effectiveness of the treatment. This report was prepared as a repository of pretreatment information and as a precursor to the numerous publications which the authors expect will be generated from the Fish Lake Project. Within this report, the authors present the methodologies used in each segment of the project and the results of their effort; the authors do not present detailed discussions of these results.