Protect and Enjoy: Webber Lake
Webber Lake is a favorite for many visitors to Land Trust lands. Its serene natural beauty, its long and interesting history, and its opportunities for hiking, camping, boating, and fishing create opportunities for people to connect with and experience it.
The Land Trust and its partners are doing a lot to ensure the wonderful attributes are protected for generations to come, including preserving the historic Webber Lake Hotel, working with the Truckee River Watershed Council to restore Lacey Meadows above the Lake, and ongoing forestry to improve ecology and wildfire resilience.
In 2022 Balance Hydrologics and aquatic ecologists completed a study of Webber Lake. Their findings: the lake is healthy, with a good mix of native species. Read the full evaluation below:
Balance Hydrologics Webber Lake Evaluation
Webber Lake is a shallow glacial lake at an elevation of 6,773 feet above sea level with a surface area of 250 acres and a maximum depth of 64 feet. It receives water from two mountain streams, Lacey Creek and Coppins Creek, primarily from snowmelt in the spring and early summer. Webber Lake flows out into the Little Truckee River and eventually the Truckee River and Pyramid Lake in Nevada.
Submerged aquatic plants are common in the shallower portions of Webber Lake, about 60 percent of the lake’s area. To some, underwater plants rubbing against one’s legs while swimming is unpleasant, but to others, snorkeling through them affords an experience somewhat like a montane kelp forest. Either way, the plants are native and an important part of this high mountain lake ecosystem, removing dissolved nutrients from the water column and forming the base of the food chain for fish and birds.
Scientists who study hydrology and limnology recently conducted a year-long study of Webber Lake to better understand its water quality, vegetation, and seasonal changes. They measured nutrients and other parameters, while also identifying vascular plants and algae from various locations and depths in the lake and across different seasons. The results showed Webber Lake is a healthy, thriving lake with limited nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and an abundance and diversity of native and even rare plants, with no aquatic invasive plant species.
Webber Lake water quality and ecology can be affected by historical and current land-uses, watershed disturbances, atmospheric deposition from urban areas, and climate change. The watershed of Webber Lake is primarily a forested wildland with a history of logging and grazing. Today, it is preserved as open space by the Tahoe National Forest and Truckee Donner Land Trust. While timber cutting and grazing continues in the area and some land remains private, land managers are using techniques and approaches to restore the forested uplands that are more resilient to catastrophic wildfires and support diverse habitat.
Nutrients are necessary for some ecosystems to thrive, but when in excess, they upset the balance of the ecosystem and result in undesirable conditions for both the critters that live in the lake and the public who come here to enjoy the lake. Scientists studying Webber Lake discovered that not only were nutrients low, but many of the physical and chemical parameters measured were similar to historical measurements from the 1970s. This suggests the chemistry of the lake has remained unchanged for over 40 years.
Scientists also identified 15 different native species of vascular plants (macrophytes) in Webber Lake and 20 species of algae and cyanobacteria, but there are likely many more species of the latter (microphytes) present in the lake. No invasive non-native species were observed, and, unlike some other regional lakes, there have never been any excessive or harmful algal blooms.
The most abundant aquatic species are broad-leaved pondweed (Potamogeton amplifolius), Nuttall’s waterweed (Elodea nuttallii), and ribbon-leaf pondweed (Potamogeton epihydrus), found from the shore (waterweed) to depths of at least 11 feet (broad-leaved pondweed). Ribbon-leaf and Robbins’ pondweed (P. robbinsii), which also occur in the lake, are considered rare species in California. A third species of rare pondweed has been recorded in the past but was not observed during the aquatic plant surveys.