North American economic integration and industrial pollution in the Great Lakes region

The North American Great Lakes / St . Lawrence

Incidental oligotrophication of North American Great Lakes.

Phytoplankton production is an important factor in determining both ecosystem stability and the provision of ecosystem goods and services. The expansive and economically important North American Great Lakes are subjected to multiple stressors and understanding their responses to those stresses is important for understanding system-wide ecological controls. Here we show gradual increases in spri...

Linking Science and Policy for Urban Nonpoint Source Pollution in the Great Lakes Region

While some environmental problems in the Great Lakes have been ameliorated in the last few decades, others have not. One problem that still resists solution is urban nonpoint source pollution: contaminated runoff from impervious surfaces (such as roads, parking lots, and roofs), and from other sources, such as lawns and construction sites. This form of pollution is rooted in fundamental aspects...

Uncertainty and Fishery Management in the North American Great Lakes: Lessons from Applications of Decision Analysis

—Many fishery management decisions continue to be guided by science only through “best guess” interpretation of assessment information and deterministic models of fisheries and food webs; until very recently this was true of nearly all fishery management in the Great Lakes. However, fishery management decisions can be improved by formally considering uncertainty when evaluating management optio...

Forecasting the spread of invasive rainbow smelt in the Laurentian Great Lakes region of North America.

Rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax) have invaded many North American lakes, often resulting in the extirpation of native fish populations. Yet, their invasion is incipient and provides the rationale for identifying ecosystems likely to be invaded and where management and prevention efforts should be focused. To predict smelt presence and absence, we constructed a classification-tree model based on h...