Qualla: Experimental Lakes Area

Experimental Lakes Area: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1973, a photograph changed the world's understanding of freshwater. Lake 226, split by a vinyl curtain into two basins, showed one side choked with bright green algae and the other crystal clear. The difference was phosphorus. That single image, taken at a remote research station in the boreal shield country of northwestern Ontario, became what limnologists call the most important photograph in the history of their science. It proved beyond argument that phosphorus was the culprit behind the choking algal blooms plaguing the Great Lakes and waterways across North America. The Experimental Lakes Area, a cluster of 58 formerly pristine lakes southeast of Kenora, Ontario, had delivered unimpeachable evidence by doing something no laboratory could replicate: it experimented on entire ecosystems.

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Image: P199 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Experimental Lakes Area: A Country's Lakes Become Its Lab Bench

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sbath iisd, CC BY-SA 4.0. The idea was audacious. In 1968, responding to the International Joint Commission's 1965 call for studies on transboundary pollution in the lower Great Lakes, the Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada set aside 46 small, deep lakes and their catchment areas in the Prec...

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Image: Sbath iisd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Experimental Lakes Area: The Photograph That Banned Phosphates

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sbath iisd, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Lake 226 experiment was elegant in its simplicity. Researchers divided the lake with a curtain and fed one basin carbon and nitrogen, the other carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. The phosphorus basin erupted in algae; the control side stayed clear. That aerial photograph convi...

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Image: Sbath iisd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Experimental Lakes Area: The Fight to Keep the Lights On

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sbath iisd, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2012, the Canadian federal government defunded the Experimental Lakes Area through the omnibus Bill C-38. The decision stunned the scientific world. The journal Nature called it "disturbing" and noted it was "hard to believe that finance is the true reason" for the closure. Fi...

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Image: Sbath iisd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Experimental Lakes Area: New Custodians, New Questions

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sbath iisd, CC BY-SA 4.0. On April 1, 2014, the International Institute for Sustainable Development signed three agreements with the governments of Ontario and Canada to become the long-term operator of what is now called IISD Experimental Lakes Area. The transition was not without controversy -- former E...

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Image: Sbath iisd | CC BY-SA 4.0