The existence of a distinct coastal zone is confirmed in Lake Tahoe (California-Nevada) by horizontal transects measuring chlorophyll and temperature simultaneously. Creation of the coastal region is influenced by bottom topography, the nature of the surface wind stress, and the difference between physical processes occuring within a Rossby radius of deformation and those occurring in midlake. Chlorophyll records from horizontal transects were decomposed by spectral analysis, and the normalized spectra from nearshore and midlake were compared. The two regions were found to differ at large scales, primarily because of differences in nutrient import, and at intermediate scales because of differences in the mixing regime. The coastal zone was observed to erode with increasing winds and weakening stratification, leading to little significant difference between nearshore and midlake chlorophyll patterns.