Squam Lakes Watershed Planning

In the early 1990's the Squam Lakes were chosen as the location to perform a model watershed study incorporating Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis and inventorying. The image below shows the Squam Lakes Watershed with undevelopable areas that include water and wetlands and their restricted buffers, slopes too steep to build on and already developed and protected lands.

UNH simplified the Watershed Build-Out analysis down for the SLA to show them that there was the potential that new development in the watershed could run over three times the current level of development. This was important as certain areas of the lake were already showing a decline in water quality at the current development level.