There is an urgent need to understand how climate change is affecting water quality in lakes of the Adirondacks. The Survey of Climate and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems (SCALE) aims to characterize the chemical and biological status of Adirondack lakes with modern sensor technology. The comprehensive list of water quality and food web parameters that SCALE will measure on 200+ Adirondack lakes presents a unique opportunity to develop a model of parameters that can help explain PFAS surface water concentrations and thus inform monitoring plans for PFAS across the state and northeast. Furthermore, the urgent need to develop low-cost monitoring tools for PFAS detection in surface waters will be addressed by this study. A field-ready laboratory sensor, capable of detecting PFOS and PFOA at ppt levels has been optimized for drinking water applications. This sensor holds great promise but still needs to be tested in lake water matrices and evaluated for large-scale field deployment. Successful implementation of this sensor would provide communities, environmental agencies, and water resource managers with a rapid, low-cost, and accessible approach for PFAS monitoring, reducing dependence on expensive and time-consuming laboratory analyses, and enable broad geographic coverage.