A 15‐year series of daily measurements of pH and total alkalinity recorded at the water intake of a municipal water‐treatment plant on Clear Lake, Iowa, demonstrated that rapid chemical changes occur annually as the ice cover melts. Additional measurements of total and calcium hardness on this and three other eutrophic, hard‐water lakes showed that total and calcium hardness concentrations declined rapidly as the main ice mass was destroyed. This decline was not caused by chemical or biological precipitation of carbonates, but by a dilution effect of melting ice. The magnitude of the declines could be predicted from measurements of hardness under the ice, lake volume, and volume of ice.
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Canfield et al. (1983) studied this question.
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