Bur Oaks Pond

Bur Oaks Pond earns a D — measurements through 2024 show persistent nutrient pressure that limits clarity through the summer. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

Eutrophic conditions are the baseline here: clarity drops noticeably in late summer, and dissolved oxygen near the bottom can become a concern. A maximum depth of just 9 ft means sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the water column whenever wind stirs the bottom — a classic shallow-lake dynamic. Bur Oaks Pond is small — 10 acres alongside 0.5 miles of shoreline — which makes it sensitive to even modest changes in watershed runoff or recreational pressure. Bur Oaks Pond sits at rank 22 of 36 in Dakota County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Bur Oaks Pond has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. 6 fish species are on record, with panfish making up the recreational core. No formal public access is documented at Bur Oaks Pond — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.