Sign near Florida Lakewatch headquarters

Florida Lakewatch, established in 1986, is a volunteer water-monitoring program coordinated through the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

. This project is headquartered at

Gainesville, Florida Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...

, within the campus of the University of Florida. Florida Lakewatch has in its history obtained funding from a number of sources, but currently is mostly funded by the state of Florida.

Volunteer involvement

There are more than 5,400 lakes in Florida and a number of rivers. The Florida Lakewatch program provides support to citizens interested in monitoring lakes and providing data they collect for the program. The Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences of the University of Florida provides faculty, staff and laboratory support to more than 1,800 volunteers. Reliable water chemistry data has been collected from more than 1,000 lakes from at least fifty counties. Florida Lakewatch works directly with citizens who live on or use lakes, rivers or waterways and are willing to participate in a long-term monitoring effort. These volunteers must have access to a boat, since much of the data collection must be done away from lake shores. Florida Lakewatch has at least basic information on 5,420 lakes in Florida.

Services provided

Florida Lakewatch provides a variety of items useful to those interested in lakes. These include (all in the Florida Lakewatch website): *

Bathymetric Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors (''seabed topography''), lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of water d ...

maps of approximately 320 Florida lakes *Various types of data grouped by subject matter *An online library of almost all the project's newsletters *Information about all the other Florida Lakewatch publications *Information about periodic volunteer meetings at the county level

Links to Florida online water atlases

The Florida Lakewatch website contains links to the

Florida Atlas of Lakes Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to t ...

, produced by the

University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF i ...

's Water Atlas program. This program is supported by Florida Lakewatch and the Florida Lake Management Society. Through the Florida Atlas of Lakes seven county water atlases can be accessed. These are: the Polk County Water Atlas, the Hillsborough Water Atlas, the Pinellas County Water Atlas, the Sarasota County Water Atlas, the Seminole County Water Atlas, the Orange County Water Atlas, the Manatee County Water Atlas.Florida Atlas of Lakes, http://www.wateratlas.usf.edu/AtlasOfLakes/Florida/ .

References

{{University of Florida Water organizations in the United States University of Florida Environmental organizations based in Florida 1986 establishments in Florida Environmental organizations established in 1986