Marie Lake

Marie Lake pulls a D on the LakeGrade rubric — phosphorus loading and limited clarity hold it below the Minnesota average. 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 36 ft puts Marie Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. At 146 acres, Marie Lake fits the Minnesota median for monitored lakes, with 3.8 miles of shoreline. Within the 55 graded lakes of Stearns County, Marie Lake sits at rank 45, near the bottom of the county list.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Marie Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Marie Lake, one of 15 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. 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.