Puslinch Lake is a kettle lake located in Wellington County, Ontario

Wellington County, Ontario

Wellington County is a county located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The county seat is Guelph, a city which is politically independent, but Guelph's status as the seat means it houses the county's administrative offices...

, Canada. It is the second largest kettle lake in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. The lake provides many recreational activities, including swimming, fishing, sailing, motor boating, and water skiing. The Puslinch Lake - Irish Creek Wetland, a provincially significant area, is adjacent to the lake.

Hydrography

The lake is normally fed by surface runoff

Surface runoff

Surface runoff is the water flow that occurs when soil is infiltrated to full capacity and excess water from rain, meltwater, or other sources flows over the land. This is a major component of the water cycle. Runoff that occurs on surfaces before reaching a channel is also called a nonpoint source...

 and underwater springs; there are no permanent inflow streams. Several ephemeral streams discharge into Mud Bay, however. During high water conditions, the lake outflows into Puslinch Lake Creek, which is a part of the Grand River

Grand River (Ontario)

The Grand River is a large river in southwestern Ontario, Canada. From its source, it flows south through Grand Valley, Fergus, Elora, Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, Paris, Brantford, Caledonia, and Cayuga before emptying into the north shore of Lake Erie south of Dunnville at Port Maitland...

 drainage basin

Drainage basin

A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...

. There is a channel connecting Puslinch Lake to Little Lake, located to the northeast. However, it is devoid of moving water, except for high water conditions.

Ecology

The lake is relatively shallow, most of it being less than 2 m in depth; the maximum depth is approximately 5.5 m. The deepest area corresponds to only 0.4% of the entire lake. Because of that, and due to very limited inflow and outflow, the lake actively undergoes the processes of eutrophication

Eutrophication

Eutrophication or more precisely hypertrophication, is the movement of a body of water′s trophic status in the direction of increasing plant biomass, by the addition of artificial or natural substances, such as nitrates and phosphates, through fertilizers or sewage, to an aquatic system...

, with associated algal bloom

Algal bloom

An algal bloom is a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in an aquatic system. Algal blooms may occur in freshwater as well as marine environments. Typically, only one or a small number of phytoplankton species are involved, and some blooms may be recognized by discoloration...

, low oxygen level, and periodic fish kill

Fish kill

The term fish kill, known also as fish die-off and as fish mortality, is a localized die-off of fish populations which may also be associated with more generalised mortality of aquatic life...

s. While these processes are natural, their rate is increased by anthropogenic factors, since a large portion of the lake's shoreline was modified from its original state to allow residential development. Increasing thickness of organic sediment

Sediment

Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....

s resulted in the necessity to dredge

Dredge

Dredging is an excavation activity or operation usually carried out at least partly underwater, in shallow seas or fresh water areas with the purpose of gathering up bottom sediments and disposing of them at a different location...

 the lake. Settling ponds were constructed nearby; however, they were quickly deemed inadequate. A new approach was then implemented, involving moving the dredged material into porous bags, which allowed water to be released back into the lake. The remaining dried material is intended for sale as topsoil

Topsoil

Topsoil is the upper, outermost layer of soil, usually the top to . It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs.-Importance:...

 enrichment.

Fish population

There are 16 species of fish present in the lake; some of them had been introduced

Introduced species

An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...

. The lake supports a population of banded killifish

Banded killifish

The banded killifish , is a North American species of temperate freshwater killifish belonging to the Fundulus genus of the Fundulidae family. The natural geographic range extends from Newfoundland to South Carolina, and west to Minnesota. It occupies the Great Lakes drainages...

, one of only a few known populations in the whole Grand River basin.