Located along Pine Road, Lake 302 is a double-basin lake that has played a critical role in some of our most famous and impactful experiments.
In the early 1970s and again in the 1990s, Lake 302 was fertilized with nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous as part of eutrophication work at ELA. In the 1980s, a plastic sea curtain was installed dividing the two basins, and the two basins were acidified in different ways as part of ELA’s acid rain research.
In 2004, stable isotopes of mercury were added to the uplands of Lake 302 to understand how much mercury moves across the landscape. In 2023, Lake 302 was the site of an exciting new experiment exploring what happens when the chemicals used to protect tires break down and leach into nearby lakes.