The Conservation Planner 2.0 planner shares information from over 100 datasets for lakes across the Upper Midwest. With information on gamefish, water quality, land use and land cover, non-native species, physical characteristics, social information, and more, the revised Conservation Planner 2.0 is a powerful tool to inform conservation on lakes near you.
Smart conservation requires learning the specifics about the ecological system that one is protecting or restoring. Understanding the threats facing lakes, the trends in lakes’ conditions, and how they compare with similar nearby lakes can guide expectations and conservation strategies. The MGLP Conservation Planner 2.0 expands upon and complements existing tools using data from state, federal, and tribal resource agencies, academic researchers, private consultants, and volunteer monitors.
The planner allows you to create custom queries using over 75 different variables to compare lakes in their areas. If you want to learn more about a specific lake, the planner can create a customized 30-page report for each lake in the partnership, which synthesizes and explains available data in a format that can be easily shared with partners.
Suggested uses
The Conservation Planner should complement local sources of data that may be more complete or accurate for your lake. We recommend that you explore the Conservation Planner to learn more about your lake, and then take that information to consult with agency biologists to build a conservation plan that works for your lake. The Conservation Planner has two components, the Lake Viewer and the Lake Report.
Lake Viewer
The Lake Viewer function of the planner provides a basis for comparing lakes and understanding trends across the landscape. You can select and compare lakes that share characteristics from a list of over 75 variables, such as state, county, lake size, maximum depth, shoreland development, watershed development, nutrient levels, thermal class, modeled changes in abundance of gamefish species due to climate change, non-native species presence, the presence of boat ramps, and more.
Lake Report
The Lake Report function is designed to provide information as a starting point for understanding, assessing, and conserving the health of an individual lake. Click on a lake and hit the “Generate lake report” button to see a customized 30-page document describing the lake, with a host of additional data such as time series of water quality data, maps of watershed land use and land cover, and more. You can save the report or export the maps within it to print or share with others.
Citation
The Conservation Planner can be cited as: Midwest Glacial Lakes Partnership. 2026. Conservation Planner. Accessed at: midwestglaciallakes.org/resources/conservationplanner on [DATE].
Individual datasets provided through the Conservation Planner should be cited based upon the original source, which is available in the description of variables provided below.
Data
The Conservation Planner is built upon the best available regional and national datasets for lake-relevant information. Below are links with information about each variable in the Conservation Planner and links to download data for all lakes in the tool. Users can also generate a custom list of lakes meeting the user’s criteria in the Conservation Planner, and then export the data for that subset of lakes. Questions regarding the data should be directed to MGLP Coordinator Joe Nohner.
- Data descriptions: Description of variables in the Conservation Planner and associated datasets:
- Export reduced dataset as CSV: A shorter list of approximately 115 variables available through the Lake Viewer.
- Export full dataset as CSV: Download the complete raw dataset for all lakes, including every field available in the Lake Report or Lake Viewer.
- Export time series data as Excel file: Download the time series data from the Lake Report for all lakes.
- Shapefiles used to create the GIS maps, such as the lake shoreland buffers, lake watersheds, points for each lake in the MGLP database, and more are available upon request from MGLP Coordinator Joe Nohner.
Take Action!
Are you motivated to take action? Start by contacting professionals in your state. A good place to start is our Resources for Conservation page. On this page you can also find resources at the state and regional level to learn more about your lake, identify grants to support conservation, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
I know that additional data exist for my lake (e.g., citizen science data, recent fisheries surveys), why are they not included?
Maintaining a consistent, updated, and all-inclusive database at the regional level is not feasible. The Conservation Planner 2.0 is built upon a compilation of numerous datasets across the region, many of which have their own policies for what data they include, how often data are updated, etc. The MGLP relies upon the organizations that have developed these datasets to determine which data to include and how frequently their dataset(s) are updated. For datasets that are frequently updated, we intend to update our databases on a regular basis. You can see information about when a dataset was last updated in the “Data descriptions” file listed above. We recommend always using the MGLP Conservation Planner 2.0 to complement other known data sources for your lake and the expert advice of professional biologists responsible for managing the lake and its fisheries.