Salted Frog
Road salt is among the most important pollutants of waterways in the Adirondacks and the Champlain Valley and AWI works to understand its impacts on water quality in the region and to develop practical recommendations for managers interested in reducing road salt impacts. Road salt has negative consequences for human and wildlife health, particularly in near road environments that receive direct runoff such as roadside streams or vernal pools. Many lakes in the Adirondacks now exhibit chloride concentrations many times higher than background levels and AWI estimates that 72% of lakes participating in our Adirondack Lake Assessment Program are influenced by road salt. This knitted frog was created to highlight the implications of road salt for amphibian communities. The rows of beads on his back correspond to the increasing chloride concentrations in Rich Lake (Newcomb, NY) between 2001 and 2018, data from Laxson et al. (2019).
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