Barbour Lake

The LakeGrade rubric puts Barbour Lake at a C: clarity at 9.5 ft, phosphorus readings still being added, and a TSI of 45 signal an intermediate trophic state. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. At 54 ft of maximum depth, Barbour Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. The lake is compact at 56 acres, with 1.7 miles of shoreline and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Within the 120 graded lakes of Crow Wing County, Barbour Lake sits at rank 112, near the bottom of the county list.

Zebra mussel presence at Barbour Lake means the lake's clarity numbers carry an asterisk — filtered water is not the same as nutrient-poor water. The fishery is bass-led, with 9 documented species across the lake's records. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.