Rox, Not to start a dorsal fin comparison with a rep from the land of 10,000 lakes but I think we have more than that. Oklahoma has more man-made lakes than any other
state, which give us more than a million surface-acres
of water and 2,000 more miles of shoreline than the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts combined.
An awful lot of our water is RED or at least reddish brown. A town not too far from us is named Pink, Oklahoma and the soil around there is bright pink in color. The Washita river runs reddish brown nearly all the time and when I was a kid I had the red stained underwear to prove I spent time swimming in it.
The color is NOT a dangerous abnormality indicative of poor water quality. It is indicative of the type of fine red clay that when suspended in water takes on an electric charge so that the particles repel each other and do not clump (agglutinate) readily and fall out of suspension.
I have 10 ponds and some stay very clear most of the time while some have been continuously muddy for years and years (probably since they were first filled.) I have old and new ponds that stay muddy and some that are nearly always clear. I can't seem to get a good handle on why adjacent ponds are so different in that respect. The last pond I built is going on 4 years old and my hopes that it would become "seasoned" and clear up are dwindling.
I sure hope Lake Maribou clears up as we all like clear water more than muddy but it is not a disaster if it doesn't, probably just a small disappointment. The turbidity will reduce light penetration and cut down on the productivity of its ecosystem. One of the basic foundations of the food chain is plant life, both microscopic and larger. The little creatures eat the little plant life and in turn the larger creatures eat the littler ones and so on up the chain. The base of the pyramid is life driven by sunlight.
As instrumental in gaging turbidity as the yardstick is for measuring depth is the Secchi disk. The Secchi disk is a negatively buoyant white and black segmented disk that can be lowered by a tether into the water to gauge the turbidity (resistance to light penetration.) It can be lowered and raised to determine the greatest depth under the surface that its alternating white and black surface can be detected by sight. Subsequent measurements will tell you if there is an improving trend or a decrease in the transmission of light. The assumption is made that the penetration of light visible to the observer's eye is similar in nature or relatively proportional to the penetration of the wavelengths promoting the growth of plant life (usually a safe assumption.)
Anyone interested in building a Secchi disk for measuring turbidity can easily do so it is NOT difficult.
Here is but one of many sources of info:
Make a Disk
A Secchi disk is so easy to use that a child can literally do it. In fact it is an easy way to inoculate a youngster in the ecological/scientific pursuits.
A Secchi disk may be easily deployed from a paddle boat or canoe, a sort of oceanographic cruise in miniature. Good luck to any budding limnologists! (Don't get your lanyard hung in the paddle wheel.)
Pat
