New Jersey’s Reference Lake Monitoring Network was created to monitor trends in seven minimally disturbed lakes across the state. These lakes are characterized by the lack of urban and agricultural land use surrounding the lake, minimal human modifications along the shoreline, and other criteria. The lakes are sampled and monitored once a year during the last week of July and the first week of August. The purpose of this network is to gather baseline information on minimally impacted lakes, such as water quality data, ecological integrity, and trophic state, to use as a reference when comparing to other lakes (Franken, 2025). It has been over ten years since the Reference Lake Monitoring Network started. The purpose of this study is to determine if water quality parameters of these lakes have significantly changed since the start of this program. Another objective was to determine if these lakes should still be included in the network based on the assessment of water quality parameters from the Reference Lake Network and other Lake Network projects. The researchers found that the water quality in the lakes has been relatively stable since the program launched ten years ago.