Mason Lake is located between Belfair and Shelton just off Route 3.  The proposal is to start a water quality sampling program on the Lake that would go on for at least 10 years; a sustainable study that could be handed down from graduate student to graduate student.  The intent of the study is to determine why over recent years there have been cyanobacterial blooms during winter months and why invasive water plant species are thriving so well in the lake.   This would be a great study for students interested in water quality both in freshwater and marine as well as limnology ecology.  It could possibly work into an intern program for students.  Funding sources would need to be determined. This study could easily spawn into full inventor thesis studies of the lake flora and fauna. This Lake was sampled back in the late 1980s and early 1990s by volunteers under a State of Washington Department of Ecology statewide lake water quality study program.  I am an alumnus of Evergreen State College (1976).  My primary area of study was Western Washington Estuarine Ecology under Dr. Pete Taylor. 

 

Contact Art Whitson at: a3whitson@comcast.net or (206) 351-8867