Dear Lady of the Lake,

I heard that Clear Lake has lost wetland shorelines needed to help improve the water quality of the lake, which gets pretty green and concerning during the summer. We live on the lake, is there something we can do to help the lake and the shorelines?

- Barb and Gary in Glenhaven

Dear Barb and Gary,

Thanks for this question! This is a great topic to discuss right now as the lake is clearly demonstrating what happens when a natural water body has too many nutrients and too little natural shoreline to help trap or use those nutrients - an abundance of cyanobacteria and algae blooms!

The good news is that together, as informed shoreline stewards, we have the power to make a change that will have some positive impacts on Clear Lake water quality.

First we will discuss the important role of shorelines in lakes, the state of shorelines in Clear Lake and the resources available to help shoreline property owners restore their lakeshore.

For background and reference information on structures and benefits of natural shorelines Please refer to my previous column, “Shorelines Sure are Something Special.”

Shorelines are the backbone of any lake, pond, stream, or coastal zone. They provide the structure around the water and act as a zone of transition between the land and the water. Shorelines are very unique in that they are not always dry or aquatic, but some variable combination of the two at any time.

The zone of shallow water that connects the shoreline to the open water of a lake is called the littoral zone, and this includes the edge of the shoreline area that touches water, and shallow portion of the lake before the slope gets too deep and the water gets too dark that plants can’t or don’t grow. The deep, open water zone of the lake is called the pelagic zone.

In Clear Lake, because the majority of the lake is a shallow basin or bordered by shallow-sloped shorelines and the lake water level can go from very full to very low within a couple years, the shoreline around the lake and the littoral zone share a lot of the same physical space and features. Sometimes the shoreline zone is inundated with water and sometimes it’s not.

When you consider this variability, you realize that shorelines truly are special. They provide habitat for a unique and specific range of organisms, flora, and fauna. When shorelines are removed, converted, or become degraded, we can see significant species and biodiversity loss because of the specific niche habitat the shoreline provides.

Not all plant species can tolerate, let alone thrive, in the littoral or shoreline zone. Examples of plants that have adapted to shoreline life and are prolific here in Clear Lake are Tules, technically known as Hard Stem Bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus), native aquatic smartweed (Polygonum amphibium) and a variety of native willows (Salix sp.).

There are some invasive species such as invasive creeping water primrose (Ludwigia peploides) that grow aggressively along shorelines and into the littoral zone. Primrose can become a significant nuisance to boaters, swimmers, fish and wildlife. Refer to my column “Peeved about Primrose.”

What are natural shorelines?

A natural shoreline with a rich native plant community is essential to the proper form and function of any lake littoral zone. Like the shoreline zone, the littoral zone is also usually vegetated and provides a safe refuge for small and juvenile fish and amphibians, structural habitat complexity provides essential food web components, such as plants, insects, and green algae (i.e. phytoplankton).

Natural shorelines can reduce erosion and bioturbation of shoreline sediments, which prevents nutrients (like phosphorus sourced from the sediment) from mobilizing from the shorezone into the open water. This is really important because the cyanobacteria blooms that grow to health hazard conditions in our lake use nutrients as a needed food source.

If there are more nutrients in the water column, combined with summer warmth and sunshine, the cyanobacteria can basically keep growing, indefinitely. Some cyanobacteria have the ability to produce toxins which can be dangerous to people, pets and wildlife.

Because shorelines are full of life, they can also contain some death, and this process, especially in natural lakes can be very smelly. If you live on the lake I am sure you have experienced a striking array of noticeable notes for your nostril at least once or twice. I explore those particularly distinctive odors and sources in my column, “What’s that smell?” 

Natural shorelines, with a rich, diverse native plant community can improve lake water quality because plants compete with cyanobacteria and algae for nutrients and space. When plants go dormant in fall, they break down and decompose into the sediments, trapping the nutrients they removed from the water column, into the lake sediments where they can be stored until next year’s plants use them when they sprout and grow.

However, some valuable native species are declining as a direct result of shoreline degradation and loss. For example the Clear Lake Hitch, an endemic minnow species found only in Clear Lake, has been declining in population for decades. Hitch are rather small fish, and as juveniles, after they swim down from the streams where they are born, they live their first year of life within the shoreline and littoral lake zones.

Natural shoreline and wetland loss around Clear Lake is a strongly recognized factor contributing to hitch population declines, which makes sense when we look at the amount of natural shoreline loss that has occurred around the lake due to development, roads, sea wall construction, and wetland conversion.

In 2020-2022 the Lake County Water Resources Department conducted a boat-based shoreline survey around Clear Lake. This survey was modified from a program created by the Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps) called “Score the Shore”.

For more information on this program and to access data, visit the County of Lake Water Resources Shoreline Stewardship website.

Just like the name sounds, this survey makes it possible for researchers and managers to “score” a shoreline based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative, or normally subjective features.

The survey was conducted in 1000 ft sections and staff, with help from AmeriCorp Civic Spark Fellows, made several shore-parallel passes back and forth at each 1000 ft section. During these passes, physical features along the shoreline were counted or noted in the digital survey form: docks, sea walls, ramps, other hardscaping such as boulders, rip rap, vertical walls or structures, percentage of natural vegetation like trees, shrubs or tules, in-water structures like woody debris, open space, and others.

All of these features, some weighted differently than others, were entered into a program that calculated a score that was transformed to a scale of 0 - 100, with 100 being the most perfect and healthy natural shoreline possible and 0 being the most degraded shoreline void of any natural features or benefits.

The data and visual results of this survey makes shoreline restoration planning possible for Clear Lake managers, especially when prioritizing very expensive and time-consuming shoreline restoration projects or mitigation strategies for in-lake water quality improvement.

While there are a lot of green, or healthy regions of natural shoreline, around the lake, note that there is an abundant amount of orange, yellow, and red too. Yellow and orange indicate fair and poor shoreline quality, the equivalent to a C and D grade, if our shoreline was still in school.

Speaking of school, here is a quiz question for you at home:

When you think about areas around the lake that tend to have heavy or recurring blooms throughout the growing season, do they seem to occur in places around or near areas of shoreline that were scored yellow, orange, or red on the Score the Shore map?

What about comparing the three arms of the lake, between the Upper Arm, the Oaks Arm, and the Lower Arm, which arms tend to have more cyanobacteria-bloom trouble spots, and which arms appear to have more yellows, oranges, and red shoreline scores?

If you happened to indulge yourself in the above self-quiz, the Lady of the Lake would be very interested in your answers! You can send them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Don’t worry, this won’t affect your final grade, it’s all extra credit, I assure you.

Lake managers at County of Lake Water Resources are very curious about these relationships too and are starting to work with aquatic analytical teams at Michigan State University Landscape Limnology Lab, Micorps, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute to dive into this research question and explore the relationships between shoreline development features, natural shorelines, lake water quality, and cyanobacteria bloom frequency and severity.

It's important to note that the Score the Shore result is derived from a descriptive process to assess shoreline quality. It is not a regulatory mechanism to enforce or limit what people can and can’t do on their shorelines. Chapter 23 of the Lake County Ordinances is the guideline, law and regulation for shoreline activities in Clear Lake.

However, information developed through the Score the Shore, and derived research results, can provide lake managers useful information to shape policy to improve lake conditions and protect shorelines. Future updates to Ch. 23 might reflect insights learned through the Score the Shore process, results and any resulting shoreline study effort.

The Score the Shore is also based on large 1000 ft long segments, so no one single property is being analyzed or scrutinized in any future studies. The goal of effective lake management is to target areas that would have the most high-impact restoration potential, and that extends beyond just a single parcel or property on the lake.

Clear Lake is not alone in having experienced some form of shoreline degradation. According to the US EPA National Lakes Assessment, about 36% of lakes nationwide have been graded as having “poor” lakeshore habitat. Lakes with low or limited natural shoreline vegetation are about three times more likely to also have poor biological conditions, or poor water quality and compromised biodiversity. (National Lakes Assessment 2012).

What we do know from visually assessing the Score the Shore results, is that a lot of the degraded regions of shoreline include private properties. So what can shoreline property owners on Clear Lake do to improve their shorelines? This next section will answer this and Barb and Gary’s question.

What is shoreline stewardship?

Let’s remember that Clear Lake is a very old, natural lake. Clear Lake, and her shorelines, are not, and will never be, conducive to a “classic” beachy, resort, palm-tree paradise. So real improvement of shorelines, in Clear Lake, is going to look like a return to the type of natural, vegetative shorelines that were in Clear Lake before she was developed.

A restored lake and shoreline contains an abundance and variety of natural vegetation, high fish-food production (lots of green algae), and yes, even warm, shallow nutrient-rich waters.

Clear Lake was never clear or blue like Lake Tahoe and she never will be, because no matter what the shoreline looks like, these other lakes are deep, cold, lack nutrients, and are limited in the life they can and do support.

Clear Lake was always rich with life, from the shorelines to the open water zones. Green was a common hue in all lake zones and waves were teeming with fish.

Let's take a deep breath. Try to envision the following scene in your mind.

Gravelly shores leading to long stretches of slow swaying tules (Schoenoplectus spp.), dark green strips reaching out into that lake, dotted with other graceful emergent vegetation growing at various depths. Plants like smartweed (Polygoneum aquaticum) with their pink flower spikes standing upright, providing pollinator stations in the breeze.

Spikerush (Eleocharis spp.) which resembles a mini-me of tules, grows in both deep and dry depths around the lake, standing perfectly straight, making us all jealous of its posture.

In the protected coves and bays, among the tule beds, yellow water lily pads (Nuphar sp.) lay flat at the water surface, leaves floating in clusters, providing sunny bathing stations for frogs and dragonflies, highways for beetles, relaxing rest areas for baby fish, muskrats, The lily roots make delicious snacks for otters and beavers and they don’t have to leave the safety of the shallows.

Some areas flow along the shore in solid dark green ribbons, sometimes interrupted by deep gray rock piles, and exposed bedrock, while intermittent dead, scraggly tree branches reach to the sky, their mother tree having fallen down in years past. These fallen wooden fortresses now provide aquatic matrix-structure habitat for darting fish, suntanning stations for turtles, and overhead perches for napping waterfowl and Osprey, looking for their next seafood snack.

Closer to shore, shrubs of brambly gray and arroyo willows (Salix sp.), tangle among juvenile cottonwoods (Populus sp.) and a sturdy California Bay (Umbellularia californica) . A scraggly vine of California blackberry (Rubus ursinus) twists and turns around stinging nettle (Urtica) and water sedge (Carex spp.), in the moisture soils.

This is probably what a natural shoreline looked - and felt - like around Clear Lake, prior to development, land leveling, road construction, and stream alteration. Some conserved and protected shoreline areas still resemble this scene, but they are few and far between.

Therefore, the best thing you can do for your shoreline or to best encourage it to be a natural shoreline, is to let it be. Let native tules and willows grow and expand on your shoreline, let submerged plants grow around and under your dock, and if needed, only clear out areas in a direct path for boating or around swimming areas.

Shoreline vegetation provides habitat to birds and other species, so part of being a responsible lake shore property owner is not cutting or trimming any willows or tules during seasons where that structure is providing valuable nesting habitat, in fact this concept is protected by both County Ordinance Ch. 23 and State California Department of Fish and Wildlife Code.

If a sea wall is preventing your property and house from falling into the lake, aquatic and wetland plant communities can still be established in front of the sea wall and provide similar benefits! Lakeward vegetation will actually help protect your sea wall from scour and improve the integrity of that structure, while providing benefits to water quality and wildlife. These plant communities will help “soften” your existing hardened shoreline.

If you don’t have a natural shoreline, or you want to expand your natural shoreline area, the Lake County Watershed Protection District currently has a state grant that can provide technical and financial resources to lakeshore property owners to plant, establish, encourage, and promote natural shoreline and native plant communities.

Organizational partners on this grant include the local, non-profit Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance and Bullfrog Underwater Services.

If you have a shoreline that is inundated with invasive creeping water primrose, the same program can be used to help property owners manually remove primrose and plant native plants and tules in the winter and spring.

According to the Lake County Watershed Protection District’s Shoreline Stewardship Website, they answered some common questions to help provide more information to someone who might be interested in being a Shoreline Steward.

It’s good to note that while this particular grant project was funded by the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the contents may not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the State of California.

How can this program help me?

The Clear Lake Shoreline Stewardship Program offers resources (tools, techniques, financial and technical assistance), specialized training, partnerships, and permitting pathways to empower private and commercial lakeside property owners to become better stewards of their shorelines.

What part of the work am I responsible for?

We’re looking to recruit landowners willing to roll up their sleeves and work alongside County and Watershed Protection District staff and contractors to remove invasive species, plant native species like tule, and beautify and landscape your shorelines to be more ecologically resilient. Partial or full subsidies are available for invasive primrose removal and replanting areas with native plant communities.

How do I sign up for the program?

A registration form is available on this link: https://arcg.is/muvbO. Please answer all the questions to the best of your ability. Signing up for the program is free!

When will the work start?

We’ll do our best to follow up within 2-3 weeks. If you are eager to get started, complete your application and call the District at 707-263-2344.

How do I maintain my shoreline long term?

Our programmatic vision involves creating a community of Shorelines Stewards around the lake. The Shoreline Stewardship Program will include ongoing free training sessions and eventually, potential permit or annual lease fee discounts for participating property owners certified by the Program.

Thanks again for the most interesting question, Barb and Gary in Glenhaven. I hope you will consider joining the Shoreline Stewardship program to learn more and improve your shoreline.

The hope is that once you join and improve your shoreline, your neighbor will want to join, and their neighbor, and the folks who live across the cove, and you can easily see how through this program and shared desire to make things better, our lakeshore communities can work together.

Because only together can restore Clear Lake, but maybe, eventually, we can all save our lake through shoreline stewardship.

Sincerely,

Lady of the Lake

Angela De Palma-Dow is a limnologist (limnology = study of fresh inland waters) who lives and works in Lake County. Born in Northern California, she has a Master of Science from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Lake Manager from the North American Lake Management Society, or NALMS, and she is the current president/chair of the California chapter of the Society for Freshwater Science. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..