Water Quality (WQ) monitoring program for Clear Lake, CA

Clear Lake is a large, shallow, hypereutrophic lake in Northern California, USA. Clear Lake is an important water resource for the surrounding community offering many cultural and recreational opportunities and provides drinking water for more than half of the region's population. Despite these many ecosystem services, Clear Lake suffers from Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) of cyanobacteria. This project aims to understand the lake and watershed processes contributing to the negative impacts on the lake water quality and ecosystem health with a goal of rehabilitating the lake. The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center conducted a 5-year (2019-2023) water quality monitoring program collecting monitoring data to better understand the physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting lake quality. Data from this monitoring program are publicly available here (DOI of EDI data repository to be provided when available). This project is funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife through California State Assembly Bill 707 (2017), the California Natural Resources Agency, and the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.In addition to this overarching project, we completed additional biological and optical measurements over a shorter 1.5-year time period (Jul 2021 - Oct 2022) with the goal of supporting Phytoplankton Community Composition (PCC) and Cyanobacteria genera differentiation algorithm development from remotely sensed hyperspectral measurements. Three of these sampling events were completed coincident to whole-lake hyperspectral images collected by the DESIS sensor. These additional data included High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) phytoplankton pigment data and above-water spectroradiometry (SVC HR-1024i) measurements. This additional work was supported by a NASA Office of STEM Engagement (OSE) graduate student fellowship awarded to Samantha Sharp in 2020 (Grant Number 80NSSC20K1458).

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated February 17, 2026, 04:12 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 20:02 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id b65b4b72-7747-4f65-96f1-d8ead407788e
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/SeaBASS/ClearLake_WQ/DATA001
landingPage https://seabass.gsfc.nasa.gov/experiment/ClearLake_WQ/
modified 2026-02-16
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/GCDC/OB.DAAC;NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/GCDC/SeaBASS
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash fb1a8e9932a436a131fe67ca9d110471d3925e0428b5d29b33e3ac2a9b3c783b
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial [[{"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90.0,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal 2021-01-01/2021-01-01
theme {"Earth Science"}