Science & Management

Adaptive Management (AM) informs the national scientific and management endeavours on either side of the Canada-U.S. border of the Great Lakes. Direction and guidance on the use of AM also exists through the bilateral Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Federal, state, and provincial governments alongside rights holders and other partners have a role in the implementation of AM, but interpretation of what AM is varies regionally and across sectors. As a result, the approach to AM in the Great Lakes region, as a whole, is fragmented and siloed, which is similar to the situation in other geographies that have mandates to adopt AM in the implementation of large, complex, and multi-jurisdictional science and management programs (e.g., Bay-Delta and Central Valley California). An uncoordinated approach has resulted in slow and limited progress in improving management of the Great Lakes over the last 20+ years and missed opportunities to build climate resilience across the system, despite large investments of resources. The urgent timelines for results indicated by recent announcements and commitments by Canadian and U.S. federal governments create a window of opportunity for change. This session will bring together diverse speakers from the U.S. and Canada to talk about similarities and differences in the interpretation and application of AM, improvements in coordination in pursuit of shared goals, hypotheses to test, and science activities, as well as to discuss factors that can hinder or enable greater collaboration and more robust implementation of AM. Chaired by:Marc A Nelitz, ESSA Technologies Ltd.John F Bratton, LimnoTechJimena Eyzaguirre, ESSA Technologies Ltd.

Special Session

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (NOAA GLERL), we invite presentations highlighting significant papers, data products, models and forecasts or other scientific achievements of NOAA GLERL, cooperative institutes, and partners. Presentations may highlight the development of these products and their impact. Topics of interest might include Great Lakes hydrodynamic models and forecasts, hydrology, long-term data sets, observing systems and technologies, long-term ecological research programs, harmful algal blooms, invasive species, remote sensing, or other influential areas of research. Speakers may be past or present GLERL affiliates, collaborators, or anyone with an interest in GLERL’s science. Chaired by:Mark D Rowe, NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research LaboratoryGabrielle Farina, Jamison Professional ServicesCraig A Stow, NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research LaboratoryCasey M Godwin, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, University of Michigan

Pollutants

Oil spill response research and capacity continue to be a priority in the the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence region. To fulfill the region’s energy demand, petroleum products are moved both into and out of the region via multiple transportation modes. Oil spill science is particularly important in freshwater ecosystems because of the critical services they provide, and the lack of studies on the behavior and impacts of spilled oil in freshwater compared to marine ecosystems. This session will highlight ongoing oil spill science in the Great Lakes, providing an opportunity to share the most current data with many practitioners across the region. Presentations will explore the intersection of petroleum product transportation with environmental and public health, beginning with an overview of the current state of oil spill science and policy in North America. Attendees of this session will learn from natural and social scientists about:- Behavior of crude oil in freshwater environments- Research and evaluation of freshwater oil spill response tools and techniques- Human and environmental toxicology of petroleum products- Socioeconomic vulnerability of communities within the Great Lakes region to oil spills- Indigenous engagement in oil spills response- Perception of oil spill risk among Great Lakes residents- Health and safety monitoring during response to spill incidents. This session is a collaborative effort of representatives from the Natural Resources Canada Multi-Partner Research Initiative and the Hazardous Material Transport Outreach Network. Chaired by:Kelsey R Prihoda, University of Minnesota Sea Grant College ProgramMark Burrows, International Joint Commission Ken Lee, Natural Resources Canada Jérôme Marty, IAGLR

Pollutants

Plastic debris has been found in terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric environments throughout the world. The Laurentian Great Lakes watershed is no exception, with plastic waste having been identified in air, water, sediment, soil, and biota. It has been estimated that nearly 10,000 metric tons of plastic debris enter the Great Lakes each year from the United States and Canada. Researchers have found that approximately 90% of water samples collected from the Great Lakes over the past 10 years contained levels of microplastics (MPs; Chaired by:Haley Dalian, NOAA Marine Debris Program Patricia Corcoran, Western UniversityLisa Sealock, Environment and Climate Change Canada Julian Aherne, Trent University

Microbial Communities & cHABs

Freshwater ecosystems of large lakes harbor a rich diversity of species and habitats and also provide critical resources to people. The lower food webs of these ecosystems can be degraded by numerous environmental stressors, habitat alteration, introduction of invasive species, and other factors. The structure and function of lower food webs in large lake systems, however, are not well understood due the large surface area and depth more common to marine ecosystems, great geographical distances with substantial morphological and habitat variations, and difficulties in differentiating long-term changes from inherent spatiotemporal variation. In this session we will examine the spatial and temporal dynamics, trajectory and long-term changes in lower food web changes across the large lakes. We invite talks on integrated physical, chemical and biological changes in large lake systems, issues associated with spatial and temporal processes in the lower food webs, connections across trophic levels, emerging techniques in monitoring, as well as on the use of long-term data series for understanding ecosystem changes in Great Lakes and other large lakes of the world. Chaired by:James M Watkins, Cornell University Lyubov E Burlakova, SUNY Buffalo State Alexander Y Karatayev, SUNY Buffalo StateEuan D Reavie, U Minnesota Duluth NRRI

Land Stewardship & Restoration

Sensors for in‐situ monitoring are increasingly prevalent in agricultural operations providing real-time, distributed, and high-resolution data streams to better understand carbon and nutrient cycles, disease risks, and plant physiology for yield improvements. As sensors are increasingly interconnected and creating robust databases, there are immense opportunities to build the research, management, and community capacity needed to understand, protect, restore, and ensure sustainable usage of our agricultural natural resources within the Great Lakes Region through minimizing consumption and environmental contamination (e.g., nutrient run off). By bringing together perspectives from growers, greenhouse operators, scientists, non-profit organizations, and industry, this session will not only showcase technologies and research methods, it will also highlight the collaborations and partnerships that enable development, piloting, and evaluation of data driven agricultural operations. With a focus on the ground success stories, this session will bring together leaders in innovation to discuss the coming threats and proposed solutions to increasing yields under current and future financial and environmental constraints. Contributions about large-scale sensor networks, greenhouse management, precision agriculture, nutrient management, climate change adaption, and efforts to better characterize agricultural soil and growing mediums and the spatial-temporal variability of their composition and processes are encouraged. The session is expected to bring together on-farm expertise, scientists, and the broader regulatory community to vision a pathway forwards for data-driven agriculture and promote collaboration in this space. Chaired by:Cameron Proctor, University of Windsor

Physical & Biogeochemistry

Title: Nutrient Export from Urban and Rural Watersheds to Large Lakes: Addressing the Diversity of Nutrient Sources, Speciation and Transport Pathways, and Their In-Lake Biogeochemical Impacts Large lakes and their watersheds experience multiple and evolving stressors such as climate change, urbanization, deforestation, agricultural intensification, river damming, and shoreline development. The impacts resulting from these stressors are highly dynamic in nature creating complexities and uncertainties in characterizing the associated nutrient fluxes. For instance, estimating urban nutrient export loads and chemical speciation remain uncertain. Urban landscapes contribute to both point and non-point nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and other nutrients inputs to lakes, often with distinct characteristics in loads, bioavailability, and ratios compared to agricultural and industrial landscapes.This session focuses on enhancing our understanding of quantitative and qualitative characterization of the coupled biogeochemical cycling of nutrients (N, P, Si) in lakes and their watersheds employing various approaches, ranging from mechanistic to statistical and observational modeling, field and experimental studies, and machine learning. We invite contributions addressing the uncertainties of nutrient loads from agricultural and urban landscapes, relationships between nutrient speciation and loads and lake concentrations, upstream-downstream nutrient transport and within-lake inter-basin exchanges, nutrient cycling within lakes, particularly in nearshore zones, including exchanges between nearshore and offshore areas in the context of climate change. Chaired by:Serghei A Bocaniov, University of Waterloo Zahra Akbarzadeh, University of Waterloo Philippe Van Cappellen, University of Waterloo, Water Institute Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Department of Biology

Human Dimensions

Research efforts in Lake Erie and its connected watersheds have relied on research from undergraduate students at institutions throughout the region. The issues that Lake Erie faces are to be improved over decadal time scales, thus mentoring the next generation of aquatic scientists is critically important. We propose a session aimed at showcasing the efforts of baccalaureate students in fields relevant to the health of Lake Erie. These can include presentations on fisheries, harmful algal blooms, nutrient loading, invasive species, among others. This session can provide a valuable opportunity for the professional development of new researchers as they consider a career in science. In addition to the experience of presenting their work, students will have the option of receiving constructive feedback from co-chairs on their presentations. The Co-Chairs, members of the Lake Erie and Aquatic Research Network (LEARN), will curate the presentations so they are organized appropriately by topic and lead a discussion at the end of the session to identify common themes among the talks and posters that can illustrate knowledge gaps. Chaired by:George S Bullerjahn, Bowling Green State University Suzanne M Gray, The Ohio State University Thomas Bridgeman, University of ToledoJustin Chaffin, The Ohio State University Stone Laboratory

Indigenous Knowledge Systems & Collaborations

Indigenous Tribes and First Nations have been at the forefront of holistic approaches to stewarding the health of Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin (The Great Lakes in Anishaabemowin) since time immemorial, and yet this knowledge and expertise has been historically marginalized from science, management and care of the Great Lakes. This session seeks to celebrate, honour and elevate the voices, experiences and lessons learned by Indigenous Peoples and community organizations engaged in ecological monitoring, research and storytelling. We would like to learn from the diversity of Indigenous-led collaborations and approaches to better understand and protect the Great Lakes for future generations, as we seek to restore relations among land, water, and people. We invite contributions, lessons-learned in the practice of Indigenous-led conservation, and care efforts that support and embrace Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, and governance structures. Co-presentations are especially encouraged, collaborations across knowledge systems and governance structures, as are intergenerational perspectives (Elders, youth). We envision a day of gathering and sharing among Indigenous organizations, with accommodations for hybrid participation and attendance. Facilitated discussion circles with Elders and Youth will be fostered throughout the day. Registration and travels support will be made available. Chaired by:Shayenna Nolan, Healthy Headwaters Lab, University of WindsorJanessa Esquible, University of Alaska FairbanksAlexander Duncan, Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, University of British ColumbiaCatherine Febria, University of Windsor

Remarks by Debbie Lee

Plenary

Land Stewardship & Restoration

There has been a great deal of recent interest in Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) as an approach to tackle many environmental issues and targets, including those aiming at protecting ecosystem services while meeting goals set for conservation and mitigation. The Great Lakes Basin is an area with a high potential for a wide range of solutions to be adopted to reduce floods and nutrient runoff, capture contaminants, increase local biodiversity and contribute as carbon sinks. These solutions are also available in diverse landscapes including urban environments, agricultural land and protected areas. Despite the potential for NBSs in the Great Lakes Basin, much uncertainty remains on their role, effectiveness and feasibility. As such, projects are still too often designed with limited incorporation of natural features. This session aims to share about the latest science on NBSs in the Great Lakes Basin, considering the following themes: 1- Current state of research on NBSs, 2- the assessment of complex models to make predictions at relevant scales and 3- the evaluation of effective policies to support NBSs adoption. Presentations sharing the lessons learned from scientists, designers and practitioners involved in NBSs are welcomed. Chaired by:Jérôme Marty, IAGLR

Physical & Biogeochemistry

Groundwater represents a considerable percentage of water entering the Great Lakes, either directly (via groundwater discharge along coastlines) or indirectly (via discharge into tributaries that then flow into the lakes). As such groundwater discharge to surface waters, as well as other groundwater-surface water interactions, can considerably impact surface water quality, quantity and ecosystem health. The effects of groundwater can impair surface waters by, for example, delivering excess nutrients or harmful contaminants to surface waters. Alternatively, groundwater can be beneficial by maintaining baseflows and diluting contaminants in surface waters. Actions taken within watersheds that impact groundwater flows and quality can have long-lasting consequences on surface waters. In this session, we invite talks that: i) demonstrate the influences of groundwater on surface waters including lakes, wetlands, springs, and tributaries; ii) assess the potential impacts on related ecosystem or human services; iii) use multi-scale approaches to quantify the impacts of groundwater on surface waters; iv) investigate factors that may affect groundwater - surface water interactions and their impacts, including climate, land use, engineering controls, and groundwater resource use; and vi) explore novel methods of field investigation or modeling for any of the above. Chaired by:Clare E Robinson, Western University Howard Reeves, USGS Midwest Water Science CentreHeather Brodie-Brown, Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and ParksDavid Rudolph, University of Waterloo

Advances in Large Lakes Science, Technologies & Innovations

The rapid pace of technological innovation has enabled radical shifts in environmental sensing and monitoring capabilities. Newly affordable solutions for distributed in‐situ monitoring, remote sensing, community science, and data fusion offer broad opportunities to build the research, management, and community capacity needed to understand, protect, and restore water resources across the Lake Erie Basin. New technology is enabling a broader movement of water monitoring by community groups, municipal actors, cross-sector partnerships, and industry leaders across the states and provinces along Lake Erie's shores. These technologies enhance our ability to provide functional, streamlined solutions for water quality monitoring of ever-changing conditions. This infrastructure enables early warning and real-time insights for industry, utility, agriculture, maritime, and recreational interests across the Lake and its tributaries. This session will highlight case studies and innovative tech to explore the next generation of lake data collection and analysis systems. By bringing together perspectives from research, nonprofit, and industry, this session will not only showcase technologies and research methods, it will also highlight the collaborations and partnerships that enable development, piloting, and field operation. Consider this session a water tech symposium, with submissions including experiential components such as on‐stage demonstrations of wireless sensor networking or navigating real-time data with VR technology along with conventional research presentations. Users of the newly created testbed program will also be featured that help companies rapidly test and deploy technology on the Great Lakes. Chaired by:Emily A Hamilton, Cleveland Water Alliance Ed Verhamme, LimnoTechMike McKay, University of WindsorHayden Henderson, Michigan Tech

Science & Management

Variability and changes in climate drive complex interactions between air, land, water, and ice in lake ecosystems, with links to global atmosphere-ocean-surface interactions and local ecosystem processes. Global and hemispheric climatic phenomena, in turn, are reflected in the regional climate patterns through both teleconnections and long-term climate warming, which act on seasonal and multidecadal timescales, respectively. Understanding changing water budgets is especially important in the context of regional climate warming, since changes in evaporation, precipitation, and water levels are directly linked to both atmospheric forcing and larger ecosystem response. We welcome contributions that address how lakes and their ecosystems interact with the many aspects of the climate system over this wide range of time scales, both in the Great Lakes region and beyond, and how policy makers should respond to changing conditions. This includes research covering topics in observation, diagnosis, theory, and/or modeling of the climate systems of large lakes (e.g., interactions between water, ice, land, and atmosphere, or the ecosystems embedded within). Chaired by:David J Cannon, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, University of MichiganAbby Hutson, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, University of MichiganPeter Johnson, Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors & PremiersJia Wang, NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory

Science & Management

Globally, Great Lakes are biodiversity hotspots despite experiencing sequence of ecological transformation. This has resulted in reduced wild catches and thus aquaculture farming provides a platform towards achieving Blue Economy and Sustainable Development Goals, especially food security and nutrition. This is anticipated to meet the increasing call for more food for human populations, which is likely to increase further by 2050. As a result of technological advancement including cage farming, aquaculture began commercializing some decades ago and this has resulted in an increase in production. Despite cage farming allowing farmers access to untapped freshwater resources and potential sites, it emits large bulk of waste into the ecosystem. Further, the ecological changes in Great Lakes are likely to cause conflict between private and wild investors. It's therefore crucial to adopt sustainable aquaculture practices to protect ecosystem integrity. Chaired by:Mercy Chepkirui, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI)

Ecosystem Types--Wetlands & Waterways

It is well established that wetlands can reduce the transport of the agricultural nutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen, and thus reduce the severity of HABs in downstream ecosystems (Woltemade 2000, Kadlec 2016, VanZomeren, Berkowitz et al. 2020). Furthermore, effects on nutrient transport can change over time. A site that initially retains large amounts of phosphorus can saturate and cease retention. Sometimes wetlands can release P during anoxia due to reduction of iron in sediments. Vegetation can play a substantive role in wetland nutrient dynamics and that also can undergo major temporal transitions. This session will feature any presentation related to the water quality goals of wetland restoration and management in the Great Lakes Region including presentations that address aspects of wetland function mentioned above, including coastal as well as inland wetlands and natural as well as human-constructed systems, examples of new and old wetland behavior, and findings and theories regarding the principles that govern this behavior. Chaired by:W. Robert Midden, Bowling Green State UniversityLauren Kinsman-Costello, Kent State UniversityLaura Johnson, Heidelberg University Silvia Newell, University of Michigan & Michigan Sea Grant

Physical & Biogeochemistry

This session’s focus is on the physical limnology of the Great Lakes and other lakes of the world. Papers are solicited dealing with field, modeling, experimental and laboratory studies of physical processes in lakes and coastal regions (surface waves, internal waves, currents, turbulence, stratification, ice, sediment transport, etc.) ranging in sizes from small, to medium and large. Chaired by:Jason Olsthoorn, Queens UniversityMathew G Wells, University of Toronto David J Cannon, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes ResearchYi Hong, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research