The purpose of this page is to provide educational links, documents, and images concerning Invasive Aquatic Plants on Watts Bar Lake. Choose the .pdf file (it will open in your browser) or a .zip file (better for slow connections) below. Click the “Green Arrow” to start the download. Please make sure your browser allows popups from wattsbarlakeassociation.org
A message from Dr. Hartis:
Please see attached a grey-scale map of Watts Bar. Areas where we detected aquatic plant growth in 2015 (October), either through overflight or aerial imagery, can be seen in red. Please note that this does no tell us anything about plants on the species level, nor whether plants were emergent, submersed, floating, etc. It simply tells us that something with a “plant-like” signature exists at that site. I used a border width for the polygons of “1” to make the areas in red more visible at this scale, so if you zoom in you will likely notice that areas seem to overlap land as a result. Please feel free to use this map as a general overview of aquatic plant distribution during the 2015 growing season.
By my best estimation, this is mostly submersed aquatic plants however site visits during the growing season this year would have to take place to determine what exactly is growing there. The areas in red should not be considered the only areas that potentially held aquatic plants in 2015, simply the areas that were detectable at the time of overflight/ image acquisition. However, I am confident that peak growth occurred shortly before our surveys, so this is about as best an estimate as can be gotten. This also doesn’t tell us exactly where growth will occur 2016, but it is a good starting point.
by Brett M. Hartis, Ph.D.
Program Manager
Aquatic Plant Management Program
Tennessee Valley Authority
bmhartis@tva.gov