2008 Sentinel Lake Assessment Report Lake Shaokotan (41-0089) Lincoln 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 results of alterations to the landscape on lake habitats SLICE utilizes intensive lake monitoring strategies on a wide range of Minnesota lakes. This includes analyzing the relevant land cover and land use, identifying climate stressors, and monitoring the effects on the lake habitat and biological communities. The Sentinel Lakes Program has selected 24 lakes for long-term intensive lake monitoring (Figure 1). Lake Shaokotan was selected to represent a shallow, eutrophic lake in the prairie region of Minnesota. Lake Shaokotan (or Shaokatan, as spelled locally) is a 994-acre lake in west central Lincoln County [note-in deference to MDNR Public Waters Inventory, we will use the Shaokotan spelling throughout the report]. There are two public accesses on the lake: a MDNR maintained access on the north side and a county park access on the southern shore of the lake. Lake Shaokotan is located within the Northern Glaciated Plains (NGP) ecoregion. It has a 100% littoral area with a maximum depth of about 3.4 meters (11 feet) and a mean depth of 2.4 meters (8.0 feet). The total contributing watershed for Lake Shaokotan is 8,817 acres.