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The following article is from an archived newsletter. See our Shared Waters newsletter.

IJC’s Greatest Hits of 2015

IJC staff
IJC
Water Matters - Jukebox

IJC.org received more than a quarter million hits last year. Some pages that were visited the most are highlighted here, along with a few notable shares from our social media channels.

Which ones did you read? Which ones did you miss? Let’s drop the ball …

10. We used our Facebook and Twitter pages to welcome spring, thanks to photo submissions from coast to coast along the Canada-U.S. transboundary region. We collected fall photos too, which were shared on Instagram. One of the fall photos, below, garnered 60 likes, putting it on this list.

 Early autumn foliage in Buffalo, N.Y. Credit: Elizabeth Oldfield
Early autumn foliage in Buffalo, N.Y. Credit: Elizabeth Oldfield

Speaking of photos, send a shot of what your winter is looking like to SendPhotosIJC@gmail.com. Be sure to include caption and credit information, like the photo above. We share submitted photos, with credit, on social media and sometimes even include them in reports.

9. Our main Twitter account @IJCSharedWaters was active throughout 2015. In mid-December, news of plastic cigar tips collected on Ohio beaches garnered plenty of eyeballs. The litter was retrieved by Adopt-a-Beach volunteers from the Alliance for the Great Lakes. That group also authored a guest post on our blog.

8. Our Facebook page was busy too, including during our spring and fall semi-annual meetings, when we shared infographics and other updates from our boards.

7. There’s not much ice so far on the Great Lakes this year (0.7 percent at last count), but there was frozen water galore in April 2015, when the Canadian and U.S. coast guards reported on binational ice-breaking operations on our shared waters.

 Credit: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer Nick Gould
Credit: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer Nick Gould

5 and 6. Watershed quizzes: Two quizzes on the Great Lakes and Rainy-Lake of the Woods watershed were popular. Some readers received “terrific stickers” for scoring 75 percent or higher on the Great Lakes questions. (The stickers are no longer available, by the way).

4. An oldie but a goodie, “They Come in Waves: Seiches and a Type of Tsunami Affect the Great Lakes,” was originally posted in October 2014 but made a comeback in 2015 (along with an incredible seiche on Lake Erie).

3. Our biggest blog post, “Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Water Levels: Wetter Conditions Return, Winter’s Impact Persists,” came from the International St. Lawrence River Board of Control. It discussed changing levels and conditions on the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River system. The Board posts regular regulation summaries on its Facebook page.  

2. The page for the International Rainy Lake of the Woods Watershed Board attracted heightened interest, along with a blog on public meetings held in August.

An International Rainy and Namakan Lakes Rule Curves Study Board is evaluating 2000 Rainy and Namakan Lakes rule curves that provide upper and lower target elevations for those lakes, and are used in managing water levels and flows.

1. The French-language page for the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Technical Working Group tops the list. That’s LCRRTWG for short, or Groupe de travail technique international du lac Champlain et de la rivière Richelieu in French.

The French page was part of an inundation maps product created to show potential flooding under different scenarios.

Thanks for reading. If you don’t already, subscribe to our newsletter, which is sent out about once a month and features posts from our blog, news releases, opportunities to get involved, and more.

For more on No. 1, see “Plan of Study Yields Innovative Forecasting Products for Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Basin.”
For more on No. 1, see “Plan of Study Yields Innovative Forecasting Products for Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Basin.”

 

IJC staff
IJC

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