Highland Lake

Lakes Environmental Association first launched a fully automated monitoring buoy on Highland Lake on July 18, 2014. The buoy has been redeployed in both 2015 (from May - November) and 2016. The buoy, designed by Fondriest Environmental, was placed at the deepest point in the lake, which is located in Bridgton, Maine, USA.The buoy is powered by solar panels, and uses a cell phone signal to relay monitoring data to our offices. It will automate some routine water quality monitoring, including measuring dissolved oxygen and temperature at every other meter, and near surface chlorophyll. It also has two PAR light sensors, one below and above the water, which can be used to estimate water clarity.  As part of the project, a weather station was also installed in a field overlooking the lake in 2014 and 2015. A buoy-mounted weather station was added in 2016. The weather station collects data on wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, temperature and barometric pressure every 15 minutes.  Photo: LEA's Adam Perron attaches sensors to the bottom of the buoy. The data retrieved by the buoy and weather station will be used alongside our normal bi-monthly, manually-collected lake testing data and is able to be viewed in real time from our website by clicking here.