High frequency monitoring of nutrients has been promoted as a leading indicator of incipient environmental change in lakes. All the notable examples are strongly mesotrophic or eutrophic. Oligotrophic waters return much data which is below the ‘reporting limit’ of commercially available (NATA accredited) laboratories, while more sensitive techniques remain prohibitively costly or difficult to adapt to high-frequency, automated acquisition of data. We propose that quantifying key ecosystem processes will help augment routine monitoring to guide planning and management. We explored this by quantifying adsorption of phosphorus to sediments taken from oligotrophic lakes on the Central Plateau of Tasmania under oxic and anoxic conditions. This is a key process in these lakes because they are P-limited, and the main source of this nutrient is likely via internal loading from wind-driven resuspension events. The fitted models have allowed us to make some preliminary estimates of the capacity of these lakes to adsorb phosphorus. While this is not an ‘early warning indicator’, quantifying the process contextualises catchment and water management. This could contribute to risk assessments that are anchored by mechanistic understanding of key processes to complement the ‘correlative shadows’ cast by routine monitoring programs.