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We will use individual lakes and groups of lakes in each Lake District
region to fulfil different key functions:
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Experimental lakes: These
are key "flagship" sites that are well understood, for which there
are long records of environmental and biological data and which
have on-site facilities and instruments (e.g. automatic weather
stations, deposition collectors). These sites will be used in
specific studies needed to refine models (e.g. for hydrological
processes, high-resolution ice-cover dynamics, micropollutant
bioaccumulation) and as reference lakes within each region. For a
reduced number of topics in some Lake Districts a chain of lakes
along an altitude gradient will be studied rather than a single
site.
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Classification (or Training) lakes: These are lakes
within each Lake District for which physico-chemical (and often
biological data) already exist from previous EU and national
projects, and for which catchment information (geology, vegetation,
soils, relief) is also available or can be obtained with minimum
cost. These data will be used to classify lakes on the basis
of their chemical and physical characteristics and will be used
to develop empirical models of lake-catchment attributes.
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Validation (or Survey) lakes: These are lakes within
each Lake District for which, in most cases, data are not yet
available. They will be used in a number of ways:
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to validate the empirical models used in up-scaling
physical and chemical properties of lakes (WP 1 and WP
2)
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to assess micropollutant distributions (WP 3)
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to generate data needed to develop a biological
classification of lakes (WP 4 and
WP 7)
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to validate assessments of ecological quality and
environmental status derived from regional models (WP 7 and WP
8).
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