Understanding Lake Erie's Complexity

Because of their complex nature, addressing the overlapping and interacting issues affecting Lake Erie today requires a greater level of binational communication and cooperation than ever before.

Nevertheless, significant information gaps remain, making it difficult for policymakers to determine what actions can and should be taken to improve the lake’s ecological integrity. Because the ecosystem is undergoing dynamic changes, scientists need to conduct more comprehensive biological investigations, including the effects of aquatic invasive species, climate change and other factors, as well as improve measurements of phosphorus loading. These investigations must clarify whether observed environmental changes result from increased phosphorus loadings from outside the lake or as a result of changes in phosphorus cycling within the lake, which could be due to zebra and quagga mussels, environmental changes, or other factors.

Thus, the Governments should:

• Improve phosphorus monitoring from point and nonpoint sources to determine relative contributions of external loadings versus internal cycling;



• Improve research to resolve questions about cause-and-effect linkages between observed ecosystem changes and various stressors. The complexity of this issue requires a collaborative research approach between those associated with water quality and fisheries, including linkages with watershed land use issues; and



• Ensure that these research and monitoring improvements employ an ecological modeling framework that enables the most cost-effective and ecologically meaningful programs to be developed and implemented. Doing so would provide the greatest value to resource management and policy.

Unraveling the complexity of the issues requires new research and monitoring studies under the umbrella of a modeling framework, as recommended by the Commission's Council of Great Lakes Research Managers.¹⁵ The Parties should also develop a Great Lakes ecological observation and forecast network. Such a system of automated buoys and remote sensors would supplement traditional shipboard and shore-based sampling to provide simultaneous records at multiple locations, help us to observe large-scale patterns, test models and predictions, and to increase our understanding of ecosystem and species variability.¹⁶

Eutrophication was the predominant environmental issue in Lake Erie during the 1960’s and 1970’s, toxic contaminants in the 1980’s, and invasive species in the 1990’s.  In the new millennium, scientists are recognizing that all of these issues and others, such as habitat loss and degradation, climate change and botulism, are occurring concurrently. The Commission commends the Parties for their rapid action to initiate a comprehensive study of the lake in 2002, with a large portion of the work coordinated and communicated through the Lake Erie Millennium Network. This network of scientists, managers and policymakers is playing a vital and increasingly important role to identify the issues and research priorities, obtaining the necessary data, and providing the binational forum for exchange of information and reporting. For the botulism issue, the Pennsylvania Sea Grant program and the New York Sea Grant program are providing a similar communication and coordination role.