Visitor Perception of Lake Water Quality in Two Highly Managed Urban Lakes in Saint Paul, Minnesota

Citation

Small, G. E., Finlay, J. C., Keeler, B. L., Niehoff, E., Forgrave, R., & Wood, S. A. (2026). Visitor perception of lake water quality in two highly managed urban lakes in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Urban Ecosystems, 29(2), 90. doi.org/10.1007/s11252-026-01961-1

Link to file

Urban lakes are valuable places for recreation and enjoyment, but keeping their water clean often requires a lot of effort. Even when water quality improves, people may not always notice those changes if their perceptions don’t match the scientific measurements.

This study looked at how visitors perceive water quality at two popular lakes in Saint Paul, Minnesota: Como Lake and Lake Phalen. Researchers collected feedback from over 800 visitors between 2022 and 2024 using a simple text-message survey. They then compared these perceptions with standard scientific measures of water quality.

The results showed that people’s opinions don’t always line up neatly with the data. For example, although Como Lake had much higher levels of algae (a sign of poorer water quality), visitors only rated it slightly lower than Lake Phalen. This suggests that people aren’t judging water quality based on scientific indicators alone. Instead, visitors tend to rely on what they can see—like how clear the water looks, whether there’s trash, or how much plant growth is present. Their expectations and personal experiences also play a role.

Overall, the study highlights that managing urban lakes isn’t just about improving the science—it’s also about understanding how people experience these spaces. Including public perception in lake management could help ensure that improvements are both measurable and meaningful to visitors.

Abstract

Urban lakes provide important recreational and aesthetic benefits but often require intensive management to restore and maintain water quality. However, if there are mismatches between measured and perceived water quality, improvements may go unnoticed. While conventional water quality indicators such as chlorophyll a and Secchi depth are routinely monitored, it remains unclear how well these biophysical metrics align with public perceptions. We conducted a survey to measure visitors’ perceptions of water quality at two highly visited urban lakes in Saint Paul, Minnesota—Como Lake, a shallow eutrophic lake undergoing intensive in-lake management, and Lake Phalen, a deeper mesotrophic lake with fewer recent interventions. Across three years (2022–2024), we recruited over 800 survey respondents via signage that encouraged volunteers to participate by exchanging text-messages with a custom chatbot. Comparing long-term open water measurements with visitors’ water quality scores showed mixed relationships with chlorophyll a levels. Visitor perception scores were lower for eutrophic Como Lake, but this difference was small relative to the four-fold difference in chlorophyll a concentrations between the lakes. Open-ended responses suggest that visitors base their evaluations on a combination of visual cues such as water clarity, trash, and aquatic vegetation. These findings underscore the complexity of human–lake interactions and suggest that perception of ecological conditions may be informed by additional factors including expectations, communication, and lake-specific context. Incorporating visitor perception into lake monitoring and management may help align restoration goals with visitor experiences in urban settings.