Sentinel Lake Assessment Report Red Sand Lake (18-0386) Crow Wing County, Minnesota

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is working in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) on the Sustaining Lakes in a Changing Environment (SLICE) Sentinel Lakes Program. The focus of this interdisciplinary effort is to improve understanding of how major drivers of change such as development, agriculture, climate change, and invasive species can affect lake habitats and fish populations, and to develop a long-term strategy to collect the necessary information to detect undesirable changes in Minnesota Lakes (Valley 2009). To increase our ability to predict the consequences of land cover and climate change on lake habitats, SLICE utilizes intensive lake monitoring strategies on a wide range of representative Minnesota lakes. This includes analyzing relevant land cover and land use, identifying climate stressors, and monitoring the effects on the lake's habitat and biological communities. The Sentinel Lakes Program has selected 24 lakes for long-term intensive lake monitoring (Figure 1). The "Deep" lakes typically stratify during the summer months. "Shallow" lakes are defined as mixing continuously throughout the summer. "Cold Water" lakes are defined as lakes that either harbor cisco, lake whitefish, or lake trout and are the focus of research funded by the Environmental Trust Fund (ETF). "Super sentinel" lakes also harbor cold-water fish populations and research on these lakes is also funded by the ETF. Red Sand Lake was selected to represent a shallow lake in the Northern Lake and Forest ecoregion. Red Sand Lake is a 211 hectare (522 acre lake), located in Baxter, Minnesota in Crow Wing County, within the Crow Wing River watershed. The lake has a maximum depth of 7.0 meters (23 feet) and a mean depth of 1.1 meters (3.7 feet). The lake is 96% littoral with one public access on the north shore of the lake. The total contributing watershed for Red Sand Lake is 1,132 hectares (2,796 acres). Red Sand Lake is located within the Northern Lake and Forest ecoregion.