TERC Mission
The Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) is dedicated to research, education
and public outreach on lakes and their surrounding watersheds and airsheds. Lake
ecosystems include the physical, biogeochemical and human environments, and the
interactions among them. The Center is committed to providing objective scientific
information for restoration and sustainable use of the Lake Tahoe Basin.
Goals
- Investigate the relationship between basin development and air quality, and the accelerated greening of Lake Tahoe's crystalline waters.
- Present Lake Tahoe as a model microcosm for the study of a fragile ecosystem under severe development pressure.
- Aid students, agency personnel, conservation professionals, landowners and decision-makers in the understanding and management of natural and impacted ecosystems.
- Provide environmental sciences research training to graduate and undergraduate students in advanced limnology, environmental engineering and ecology for career-track positions in higher education, government and industry.
- Establish a world-class environmental research laboratory and program that supports the spectrum of environmental research essential to resolve environmental problems at Tahoe and throughout the world.
- Attract distinguished scientists from the U.S. and abroad to the University of California for the purpose of collaboration in research and exchange of scientific ideas.
Objectives
- Serve as a nucleus for scientific and social and political science research in the northern Sierra Nevada, with emphasis on Lake Tahoe and its watershed.
- Piece together an overall picture of the dynamics of the lake's chemistry, physics and biology to provide a scientific basis for policy setting.
- Promote a broad awareness of the importance of ecological interactions in the Lake Tahoe basin to human welfare and foster a greater public concern for the conservation of natural resources and environmental quality everywhere.
- Conduct both basic and applied research in the environmental sciences using state-of-the-art techniques as well as developing new innovative approaches.
- Establish and maintain long-term experimental and reference studies of the Lake Tahoe ecosystem with emphasis on global climatic change that are applicable to lakes throughout the world.
- Provide scientific data to students, agency personnel, conservation professionals, landowners and decision-makers that serve as a sound basis for development of the most cost-effective government regulations.
- Support fundraising efforts in the basin to provide a state-of-the-art laboratory and expand education and training programs.
The Tahoe basin is a changing landscape and, today, significant portions of this
once pristine region are urbanized. Studies from the early 1960s to the present
have shown that many factors such as land disturbance, increasing resident and tourist
population, habitat destruction, air pollution, soil erosion, roads and road maintenance,
loss of wetlands and areas for natural infiltration of runoff have all interacted
to degrade the Basin's air quality, terrestrial landscape and streams, as well as
the lake itself. We now know that once nutrients enter the lake, they remain in
the water and can be recycled for decades. As a consequence, these pollutants accumulate
over time and contribute to Lake Tahoe's progressive decline. The ability of Lake
Tahoe to dilute nutrient and fine-sediment loading to levels where they have no
significant effect on lake water quality has been lost.
Continuous, long-term evaluation of water quality in Lake Tahoe since the early
1960's has shown that algal growth is increasing at a rate greater than 5 percent
per year. Over this same period, there has been a decline of clarity at an alarming
rate of nearly one foot per year. This long-term trend in loss of transparency is
both statistically significant (p<0.001) and perceived by even the casual observer.
If the loss of clarity continues at this rate, the resulting Secchi depth will no
doubt be accompanied by a change of lake color and a change in trophic status.
Fine sediments and nutrients are the major constituents that must be controlled
to meet desired conditions for lake clarity and algal growth. Researchers now contend
that approximately 50 percent of the light scattering that represents clarity loss
in Lake Tahoe is caused by small, inorganic sediment particles. About 30 percent
of the clarity loss is due to algae, and another 20 percent is due to dissolved
organic matter in the water. Although these proportions vary seasonally, it is clear
that small, inorganic sediment particles are contributing 50 percent or more of
the total clarity loss in the lake.
These recent studies show that it is the sediment particles ranging from about 1
micron to 10 microns that are of particular concern for Lake Tahoe. These particles
are too small to see except with a powerful microscope, but due to their relative
abundance in the water column and their optical properties, they are the largest
contributing factor to Tahoe’s clarity loss.