Regional lake quality patterns: Their relationship to lake conservation and management decisions

Understanding regional lake quality patterns is important to lake restoration. It puts specific lake conditions into perspective, provides a basis for establishing lake quality goals, identifies lakes most likely to benefit from restoration and forms a framework for assessing restoration success. We describe two techniques used to characterize regional lake quality patterns. Combining the two approaches provides an effective means to describe lake regions, management goals and restoration success. Case examples illustrate the significance of regional lake quality to specific lake restoration projects.