On May 30-31, NOAA Mussel Watch program data, collected by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, was presented at “Mercury in the Great Lakes,” a workshop organized by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office/Region 5 and the U.S. Geological Survey. NCCOS has been monitoring a wide array of contaminants, including mercury, [...]
NCCOS scientists met with Victor Serveiss, Environmental Advisor to the International Joint Commission (IJC), to put the finishing touches on a Mussel Watch contribution to the next iteration of the Great Lakes Biennial Report set for publication this year (2012). This report provides an overview of NOAA and Mussel Watch monitoring efforts in the region since 1992. The [...]
Cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) are on the rise in the U.S. and worldwide, becoming a serious threat to freshwater resources and public health because of their toxins and disruptive effects on ecosystems. Ongoing research funded by the National Center for Coastal Ocean Science is uncovering the secrets of why cyanobacteria are so successful. [...]
Researchers have discovered that during the summer, Lake Erie circulates in an opposite direction than other lakes in the Northern Hemisphere. Instead of currents rotating in a counter-clockwise (“cyclonic”) direction driven by the rotation of the earth, central Lake Erie has a clockwise current driven by summer winds. This causes a bowl-shaped, or inverted, thermocline that is [...]
Lake Erie is the shallowest and smallest of the Great Lakes by volume and is heavily influenced by agricultural and urban runoff. It is subject to periodic outbreaks of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and hypoxia. These problems were identified as the highest priority of the International Joint Commission (IJC) as it drafts guidelines and targets [...]
The main three environmental problems in the Saginaw Bay of Lake Huron are “muck, muck and muck”, says Craig Stow, a research scientist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab who leads a NCCOS-supported project on multiple stresses to Saginaw Bay. Muck is a mix of different types of algae, plants and decomposing organic matter [...]
Representatives from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science met with the Federal-State Areas of Concern Coordinating Committee (FEDSTACC), a group of regional stakeholders from across the Great Lakes basin, to discuss the common goals of removing EPA-designated Beneficial Use Impairments (BUI) from designated sites and monitoring the recovery of EPA-designated Areas of Concern (AOCs), areas defined by [...]
EPA Region 5 in Chicago recently hosted the second meeting on “effects-based” monitoring in the Great Lakes and scientists from NCCOS’ Mussel Watch Program attended. Scientists have long recognized that chemical contaminant monitoring in environmental matrices is expensive and limited in its ability to identify ecological risk. Molecular, biochemical, histological and morphological changes in organisms are useful to risk [...]