Historic Shoreline Change at Lake Tahoe from 1938 to 1998 and Its Impact

Wetland. South Lake Tahoe, California.

In the next few posts I wanted to turn people on to some of the great work being done on Tahoe by the folks at the Desert Research Institute.

A few years back Ken Adams and Tim Minor wrote a shoreline study:

“Historic Shoreline Change at Lake Tahoe from 1938 to 1998 and Its Impact on Sediment and
Nutrient Loading” ( Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 637-651, Published by: Allen Press)  You can find it here:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/4299116

They found that 7,150 metric tons of shoreline sediment erode into Lake Tahoe each year.  From this, they estimate that approximately 2 metric tons of phosphorus and 1.8 metric tons of nitrogen also wash into the lake each year. These shore zone erosion rates are second only to stream loading.  They conclude that shore zone erosion contributes significantly to sediment loading and less so to the Lake Tahoe’s nutrient budget.

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