Louisa Lake

Louisa Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. A maximum depth of 44 ft puts Louisa Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. At 193 acres, Louisa Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 4.3 miles of shoreline. Louisa Lake sits at rank 34 of 55 in Stearns County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Louisa Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Louisa Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. 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.