The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northwestern Ontario is in a remote landscape characterized by Precambrian bedrock, northern mixed-species forests, and oligotrophic lakes, bodies of water deficient in plant nutrients. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans began developing a field-research facility at ELA in the 1960s, and the area has become the focus of a large number of investigations by D. W. Schindler and others into chemical and biological conditions in these lakes.

Of the limnological investigations conducted at ELA, the best known is a series of whole-lake experiments designed to investigate the ecological effects of perturbation by a variety of environmental stress factors, including eutrophication, acidification, metals, radionuclides, and flooding during the development of reservoirs.

The integrated, whole-lake projects at ELA were initially designed to study the causes and ecological consequences of eutrophication. In one long-term experiment, Lake 227 was fertilized with phosphate...