Overview

Known for its beauty and remarkable transparency, Lake Tahoe is a natural jewel in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Tahoe basin is a changing landscape and, today, significant portions of this once pristine region are urbanized. Unfortunately, over the last five decades, increased human development has had a significant impact in the Tahoe Basin. Studies from the early 1960s to the present have shown that many factors such as land disturbance, increasing resident and tourist population, habitat destruction, air pollution, soil erosion, roads and road maintenance, and loss of wetlands have all interacted to degrade the Basin’s air quality, terrestrial landscape and streams, as well as the lake itself.

The lake has responded to increased nutrient loading from the streams, atmosphere and groundwater with steadily increasing algal growth (eutrophication) and a progressive reduction of clarity. The lake has lost approximately 33 feet, or one-third of its famous transparency, during the last 40 years and oxygen concentrations in the deep waters have declined significantly. Thick growths of attached algae now coat the shoreline rocks in the spring.