Effingham–May 12, 2015–Green Mountain Conservation Group will host a program on Thursday, May 21, on the impacts of land use and the changing climate on water quality. The speaker will be Melanie Perello, a master’s student in Environmental Science and Policy at Plymouth State University. Perello’s research combines the study of lake sediments and water monitoring to assess how water quality in Ossipee Lake has changed over time.

In the lake sediments she uses physical and chemical descriptions of the sediments along with biological indicators to infer past water quality and watershed conditions over the past 200 years. This information is compared with available information on land use and farming practices in the region to determine the role that people had in changing lake water quality.

For the modern dataset, Perello and her assistants have been collecting water samples from the lake over the past year and conducting analyses to compare the modern monitoring to seasonal trends and weather events to give the audience a perspective of the current health of the lake.

Contact Green Mountain Conservation Group for more information about this event (www.gmcg.org).