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201512 PARTNER HIGHLIGHT Lake stewards who participate in the Lake Partner Program LPP receive their annual sampling kits and return their water samples and observations to the Dorset Environmental Science Centre DESC. Located in the heart of Ontarios cottage-country DESC is perched near the southern boundary of the Precambrian Shield roughly 200 km north of Toronto. The DESC serves as the centre of scientific expertise on environmental issues affecting Ontarios inland lakes for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change MOECC and is the home of the Lake Partner Program. Today DESC monitors water quality in a series of lake basins in south-central Ontario spanning a range of cottage development. History of the DESC In the early 1970s several Ontario ministries combined resources to develop the science to support policy to minimize the impacts of land-use change on the water quality of Ontarios inland lakes. The resulting atmospheric terrestrial and aquatic-ecosystem monitoring programs that The Dorset Environmental Science Centre focused on the impacts of land-use change also provided data that contributed to the discovery of acid rain in Ontario and recognition of the importance of long-range atmospheric transport of acid emissions. During the late 1970s and 1980s DESC monitoring and research on the ecological impacts of acid rain contributed to the development of environmental regulations for reducing sulphur emissions across North America. Beginning in the mid-1990s research at DESC evolved to focus on the multiple and interacting environmental stressors affecting inland lakes. This integrated approach enabled DESC scientists to better understand the mechanisms driving lake responses to human activities. Diverse monitoring approaches have been used to monitor different lakes over time. For example a raft deployed near the centre of Harp Lake records a variety of water-quality parameters at different depths every 10 minutes all day and all year three of the 8 DESC intensive lakes are sampled every two weeks throughout the ice-free season from April to December the remaining 5 lakes are sampled once a month during the same ice-free period the 26 extensive DESC lakes are sampled once in the spring and once in the fall another 20 lakes are sampled once each year for benthos crayfish and associated water chemistry over the years additional lakes have been sampled by various researchers to compile data sets for lakes spanning spatial gradients for special studies on LPP sampling kits ready to send to the lake stewards in early 2015.