What a year 2020 was. With the unprecedented times surrounding seemingly everything around us, the annual Pennsylvania Lake Management Society Conference was no different. This year, the conference was held virtually; however, that did not stop the organization from having a full slate of excellent presentations and offering continuing education credits for applicators which our staff depends on. Black Lagoon’s Josh Burnside served as the society’s President for this year’s event.

This year the conference was themed on Emerging Threats (fittingly so) within the lake management field. There were several of note, to the staff of Black Lagoon. The first was our Day One Keynote Speaker, Dr. West Bishop who spoke on the possible health effects of various Harmful Algal Blooms, (HABs), as well as what can possibly be done to mitigate these. This coincided perfectly with our Day Two HABs panel which brought together individuals from the PA DCNR, Department of Health and PA DEP to discuss what the commonwealth is doing in regards to HABs. The group discussed possible threshold levels, monitoring, sampling strategies/occurrences, and the prevalence of these events throughout the commonwealth. Also of note was the Day Two Keynote Speaker, Kris Nichols, a soil scientist who examined the water holding capacity of soil and the possible benefits for the watersheds surrounding our lakes and ponds, remarkably interesting stuff, and an avenue that is rarely covered when examining lake and pond management.

While the virtual conference was greatly beneficial to the staff, I can speak for all of us in saying we look forward to hopefully returning to State College in 2022 for an in-person event, fingers crossed.