Researchers are learning what Minnesotans think about lake water quality
Minnesotans love the water in the land of 10,000 lakes, and if you visit a lake in the Twin Cities, you may notice some new signs. They're a part of the newest research project run by scientists at the University of Minnesota and St. Thomas.
Researchers are hoping to better understand what Minnesotans think about water quality.
"We want to hear from people who are visiting lakes to understand why they come to the lake," said Bonnie Keeler, the Water Resources Center Director at the University of Minnesota. "What they care about, what they do when they get to the lake, and how they perceive the quality of the water in the lakes throughout the Twin Cities."
The signs are posted around 17 different lakes across nine counties included in the study, asking visitors to rank their thoughts about water on a scale of 0-10.
Keeler is one of the scientists overseeing the study. She says Minnesotans have spent hundreds on millions of dollars each year to improve water quality, but know very little about how people actually perceive and value those improvements.
"They ask you to rate the water quality of the lake. You send a text message to a phone number that's on the sign, and then you interact with a chatbot," said Keeler. "So you're responding back and forth via text message with this short survey."
"So this is providing a key piece of missing information that's going to help lake managers better understand how to manage our lakes for what people really care about," said Keeler.
" I'm studying data analytics at the university, and it's cool to work with numbers and to actually enter them into a spreadsheet and to know that they'll be used later on in an analysis," said University of St. Thomas Junior Logan Sorsveen.
"In order to just show that lakes in Minnesota are special and that they need care."
Data collection will continue through the summer.
To get as much data as possible, the survey can be completed in English, Spanish, Hmong, or Somali.
