IISD Experimental Lakes Area: Ice Phenology and Thickness, 1969-2023

The IISD Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA) Ice Phenology and Thickness data package provides two types of ice data from multiple lakes in northwestern Ontario, Canada. Ice phenology is the timing of when lakes freeze over in the fall and thaw out in the spring, as an ice-on and ice-off date each year, and the days of ice duration for each winter. Ice thickness data includes total ice thickness as well as the complex breakdown of individual layers (snow, slush, white ice, black ice). This data package includes both tabular data and metadata files for each type of ice data.
The ice phenology table consists of a row for each ice-on date, ice-off date, and ice duration period for each lake, including the associated sampling method and any comments. The ice thickness table has a row for each measurement of a frozen lake on a specific date, including the total ice thickness and the thickness of individual layers as column values for each row.
Metadata in this data package include a table of location coordinates and record counts, and a PDF information sheet for ice phenology and one for ice thickness. The table of coordinates and counts is useful to know where the lakes and specific sampling sites are located and as an overview of data availability per lake (Lake 239 has the longest and most consistent data record, for both ice phenology and thickness). The two info sheets provide additional metadata details about the datasets, including background and uses of the datasets, a data dictionary, diagrams, lookup tables, descriptions of methods, and additional references. For data about lake depth, size, and volume, please consult the most recent version of our bathymetry data package: https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/revisionbrowse?scope=edi&identifier=1276
This data package is ongoing—updates will be provided as data are collected from these lakes in subsequent years. If data are not present for a lake you are interested in from IISD-ELA, please get in touch with us.
The datasets in this ice package on EDI are also published in parallel at the Lake Winnipeg DataStream repository (https://doi.org/10.25976/fwlk-qb06). Between the two repositories, the only differences are in formatting of data and metadata and the exclusion from DataStream of the breakdown of ice thickness layers (only total ice thickness data are included there) and additional metadata files (metadata CSV and information sheet PDFs not available on DataStream).