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GLERL Updates Archive |
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Links in the archive are not updated - many may be broken over time. URLs which are not linked are no longer valid (retained as historical).
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December 5, 2003Contents 1. New Study Reveals Existence of "Compartments"-Like
Social Cliques-In Natural Food Webs A new study, published this week in the journal Nature, has revealed the existence of what in human interactions would be referred to as "cliques" in natural food webs. This research examined what ecologists have previously theorized: that plants and animals organize themselves into cliques, just as humans do. These cliques, also known as compartments, are groups of species in a food-web that interact more frequently with each other than with species outside of that compartment. Strong interactions exist among species within compartments and weaker interactions exist between individual compartments. This research contributes to a more sophisticated understanding of food web dynamics by illustrating how species interact and, thus, how they impact each other. This better understanding of food webs will help natural resource managers make better management decisions that affect food webs. Food webs are multiple interconnecting food chains. Predators are likely to have more than one prey and prey are likely to have more than one predator, thereby creating a web of interactions, not a chain. A common approach of understanding how species interact in food webs is to categorize them into trophic-or hierarchical-levels, where groups of species with similar food resources and predators are associated with each other. The trophic level concept alone, however, provides an incomplete understanding of food-webs, because it only provides one view of the picture; it looks at which species are competitors, but not at the other associations species make in the food web. The discovery of compartments within food webs provides a more advanced understanding of species interactions with each other in the environment. The research, published this week in Nature, applies principles for describing social systems to food webs-an exciting new way to view food web structures and to identify compartments in food-webs. The scientists employed a recently developed social network method. "It has been proposed that social systems are more efficient and durable when composed of subgroups in which interactions are concentrated," said Dr. Ken Frank of Michigan State University and member of the research team. "This appears also to be the case for food-web compartments in ecology, and this method identifies compartments in which interactions are concentrated." Dr. William Taylor of Michigan State University and a member of the research team added: "This study highlights the importance and necessity of interdisciplinary science and problem solving." "The compartment method of measuring species interactions in an ecosystem has its benefits," said Ann Krause of Michigan State University, a member of the research team. "This method is more systematic and rigorous, as it assigns species to certain compartments based on observed research-not based on a researcher's guess-and tests the results for significance. Moreover, if compartments can be found to enhance stability in nature like they were found to do in theoretical research, we now have another tool with which to better understand stability in ecosystems. Stability is important for maintaining ecosystem health." "This study will provide a mechanism for others to study and measure the stability of food-webs," added Dr. Doran Mason of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, a member of the research team. "Understanding food web stability significantly enhances our understanding of ecosystems which, of course, helps biologists and managers in their efforts to protect and improve the system. With future applications based on this research, we may find that managers should also focus on maintaining compartments in food webs, which are whole groups of species, not just maintaining the population of a single species, to maintain ecosystem health and integrity." This research is a collaborative among scientists Ann E. Krause, Kenneth A. Frank, and William W. Taylor from Michigan State University's Department of Fisheries & Wildlife; Robert E. Ulanowicz from the University of Maryland; and Doran M. Mason of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. This research was funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Science Foundation. 2. Hot Items - CILER - Lake Huron Sinkhole CILER Director Thomas Johengen and Dr. Guy Meadows from the University
of Michigan recently partnered with the NOAA Thunder Bay National
Marine Sanctuary, the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory,
and the Institute for Exploration on a research cruise to explore
and sample a recently discovered karst sinkhole on the floor of
Lake Huron in 95m of water. Dr. Meadows led the exploration and
sampling of the sinkhole using the University of Michigan’s
remotely-operated vehicle, M-ROVER. M-ROVER was used to provide
fine-scale mapping of the sinkhole and to provide samples for an
exploratory study of the hydrology, chemistry, and microbiology
of the groundwater venting from the Silurian-Devonian aquifer. The
source and distribution of the plume were mapped by pumping water
through a CTD mounted on M-ROVER and then pumping water samples
up to the deck of the boat where they were captured for detailed
chemical and biological analyses. Water samples were collected and
analyzed for nutrients, cations, organic acids, alkalinity, microbial
abundance, heterotrophic production, and chemosynthetic activity.
In situ observations revealed the plume water had an elevated temperature
of 3.5 ºC and an order of magnitude elevated conductivity over
ambient bottom water. The conductivity was primarily sulfate based
and there was strong evidence for chemosysnthesis and hydrogen sulfide
production. This exploration may be the first of its kind to find
direct evidence for such a unique chemosynthetic environment within
the Great Lakes. Photos from the research cruise can be found at:
3. 2 GLERL Position Announcements Announcement Number: C-ERL-04001.SLW Announcement Number: C-ERL-04003.SLW You can view the vacancy announcements on the COOL website at
"Newly Discovered and Corroborated Deleterious Effects of Zebra Mussels on Lake Ecosystems" Dr. David F. Raikow, Ecologist Video archive available: 5. GLERL 2004 Proposals Comments are welcome through mid-December. Send to the individual PI, Dr. Brandt or to me as appropriate. I would be especially interested in knowing which projects might be of interest to your constituents.
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November 10, 2003Contents To some of us, ice is nothing more than a clear cube of frozen liquid that we use to cool our beverages, but to people and creatures who live in and around lakes, it is part of the ebb and flow of their daily life. NOAA published a new 30-year electronic atlas of ice cover for the Great Lakes. The atlas contains data on more than 1,200 digitized Great Lakes ice charts for winters from 1973 to 2002 and an analysis of these ice charts. Ice is nice, but who would use such a collection of information? “The atlas is a resource for those seeking information on Great Lakes ice cover climatology. It provides a benchmark of ice cover and ice cover variation of the Great Lakes during the last quarter of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century,” Assel said. Assel added that the Navy/NOAA National Ice Center and the Canadian Ice Service use information from this atlas in making operational Great Lakes ice charts. Portions of these data have also already been used by other federal and state government agencies, academia and the private sector for research, educational, operational and engineering applications. People who are involved in fisheries studies know that ice cover is an important factor in the life cycle of certain fish species; people who model lake levels know that more ice cover means less evaporation; Great Lakes shippers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers need to know ice conditions for planning and for operational activities in winter and early spring; and river ice jams in the connecting channels of the Great Lakes can cause damage to shore property and loss of hydroelectric generating capacity, Assel said. “Also, people who enjoy ice fishing want to know when the bays and harbors freeze over,” he said. The atlas offers three types of analysis products. * Ice charts dates of the first reported ice, dates of the last
reported ice, and ice duration for each winter, as well as statistics
over the 30-winters—the maximum, minimum and average; The atlas contains a lot of information—1.4 gigabytes of data, much of which is in compressed files (about 4 gigabytes when uncompressed). The online version of this atlas can be used to browse and download a limited amount of data. However, because of its large size, it is not practical to download the entire atlas from the Internet. Therefore, it is also available on CD-ROM and DVD formats. To request a copy of the atlas on CD-ROM or DVD send an e-mail to Cathy.Darnell@noaa.gov or to iceatlas.glerl@noaa.gov. (Please provide your name and complete mailing address.) Media Contact: Jana Goldman, NOAA Research, (301) 713-2483 2. New Reprints * Raudsepp, U, D Beletsky and DJ Schwab. Basin-scale topographic
waves in the Gulf of Riga. Journal of Physical Oceanography. 33:1129-1140
(2003). 3. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 11:00am. Oxygen Concentration
and Demand in Lake Erie Sediments. Dr. Gerald Matisoff, Department
of Geological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland,
OH. Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 1:30pm. The NOS (National
Ocean Service) Great Lakes Observing Network. Mark Bushnell, Program
Leader for the Ocean Sensor Technology and Evaluation Program within
NOAA/NOS/CO-OPS, and, Jennifer Werner, Civil Engineer, NOAA/NOS/CO-OPS Thursday, November 20, 2003 - 10:30am. The Benthification
of Freshwater Lakes: Exotics Turning Ecosystems Upside Down. Christine
Mayer Assistant Professor, Department of E.E.E.S. University of
Toledo, Lake Erie Center. |
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October 6, 2003An Electronic NOAA Great Lakes Ice Atlas This Atlas (which is available on GLERL's Web Site at: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/atlas/ contains approximately 1.4-gigabytes of data, much of which is in compressed files (about 4-gigabytes when uncompressed). The online version of this atlas can be used to browse and download a limited amount of data. However, because of its large size it is not practical to download the entire atlas from the Internet. Therefore, it is also available on CD-ROM and DVD formats. To request a copy of the atlas on CD-ROM or DVD send an email to Cathy.Darnell@noaa.gov or to iceatlas.glerl@noaa.gov. (Please provide your name and full surface mail address). The atlas contains data on over 1200 digitized Great Lakes ice charts for winters from 1973 to 2002 and three types of analysis products. The first analysis product includes ice charts of the following: dates of the first reported ice, dates of the last reported ice, and ice duration for each winter, as well as, the maximum, minimum and average ice cover concentrations. The second analysis product is a 30-year set of annual daily ice cover time series. The daily time series was used to create: 1) computer animations of spatial patterns of ice cover for each winter, 2) line plots of lake averaged ice cover for each lake over the 30 winters. The third analysis product is weekly statistics. There are weekly ice charts and grids of: maximum, 3rd quartile, median, 1st quartile, and minimum ice cover concentrations for the 30-winter base period. The weekly statistics are based on the original ice chart data set and not on the daily time series. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL Wednesday, October 15, 2003. 10:30 a.m. Historical Response of Zooplankton Communities to Ecological Change in Lake Victoria (East Africa) Dr. Thomas Bridgeman, Research Assistant Professor, University of Toledo, Lake Erie Center The introduction of a large predator, the Nile perch (Lates niloticus), caused devastating losses in the fish community of Lake Victoria between 1960-1990, with an accompanying loss of zooplankton and phytoplankton species diversity. Climate change and anthropogenic influences have also been implicated in these losses, but analysis has been confounded by a scarcity of historical records, creating difficulties in determining the timing of changes in zooplankton, phytoplankton, and fish communities in relation to each other. In this study, fossil remains of diatoms, zooplankton (Bosmina, chydorids), and an invertebrate predator (Chaoborus) in sediment cores were analyzed to assemble a 50-year record of changes in the plankton community. The most dramatic changes occurred in the 1980s when several cladoceran species were extirpated from nearshore zooplankton assemblages. These losses corresponded to a rapid shift in the diatom community from dominance by Aulacoseira sp. to Nitszchia sp., and to increasing populations of Chaoborus and the cyprinid planktivore Rastrineobola argentea in nearshore areas. The results suggest that the demise of cladoceran zooplankton resulted from increasing predator densities combined with environmental changes that led to increased hypoxia of bottom waters. An additional example of the importance of stratification and hypoxia in structuring invertebrate communities is given from current research on western Lake Erie mayfly (Hexagenia sp.) recruitment. If you would like to view this seminar remotely, please request that it be recorded before October 8. |
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September 29, 2003NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 10:30 a.m. Abstract Please let me know by October 7th if you are interested in a webcast of this seminar! |
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September 15, 2003Please Update your address books... The e-mail address for Rochelle Sturtevant is rochelle.sturtevant@noaa.gov. GLERL is phasing out the other version of our addresses (glerl.noaa.gov) to take advantage of NOAA firewalls. I have been experiencing some difficulties receiving mail through the old address for a few weeks now (it had been running fine in parallel for a year) -- if you have not heard back from me on a message which you sent via e-mail over the last few weeks, please resend to the 'new' address. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series - http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/news/seminars/ For more information, contact: Dr. Thomas Johengen (University of Michigan/CILER), 734-764-2426 I do not currently plan to videotape this seminar. If you would like to see a video, please let me know asap so that I can make arrangements. Speaker ideas for our fall series welcome!
Along with the Great Lakes Commission, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, and the Canadian Consulate General, GLERL sponsored a tour of the Buffalo-Niagara region for Congressional staff August 12-14. 18 staff participated in the tour, most from the Washington offices of members of Congress from the Great Lakes region. Highlights of the "Odessey II" tour included a VIP reception and dinner hosted by the Canadian consulate at Inniskillin winery, research cruises aboard the research vessels Laurentian, Kaho and Musky, a sea lamprey control demonstration, and a variety of speakers on topics ranging from binational cooperation to aquatic nuisance species. While not a co-sponsor, NY Sea Grant was a major contributor to the success of the tour: Jack Mattice gave the group an overview of Sea Grant as well as local commentary on the Niagara region and Chuck O'Neill gave an overview of the outreach side of ANS work. NY Sea Grant was also instrumental in helping us line up local speakers for the AOC portion of the tour and helping plan the local logistics. |
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August 28, 2003Contents 1. GLERL in the News - Critter's demise puts fish in peril The spineless scud--a high-calorie, high-fat crustacean that fish love to feast on--has been a resilient Great Lakes resident since the end of the Ice Age. But new research confirms a trend scientists have been watching for a decade--the scud are declining and have now vanished from some regions of the lakes, creating a food shortage for several species of fish. The swift demise of the scud is just one finding in The State of the Great Lakes 2003, a mixed report that cited a number of problems looming for Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes. Though Lake Michigan is also suffering from wetland decline and toxic contaminants, the loss of the tiny but vital shrimplike scud, also called diporeia, further stresses an already fragile food chain in the Great Lakes. Researchers believe the troublesome zebra mussel is again the culprit. This time, the invasive mollusk is starving the diporeia population by cleaning up algae before the sediment-dwelling scud can eat them. The impact has been recently documented on the whitefish population and many other fish, including sculpin, smelt and chub, which in turn are food for trout and salmon. Diporeia make up 25 to 75 percent of the whitefish diet, contributing as much as 61 percent of its weight, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Still confounding scientists, however, is that although the small orange-tinted crustaceans are declining, they are showing no physiological signs of starvation, said Tom Nalepa, who wrote the section on diporeia in the report, a joint project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environment Canada. "Their weight is still high and they don't look stressed, yet they are dying off," said Nalepa, a research biologist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. Lake Michigan "is in middling shape," said Paul Bertram of the EPA's Great Lakes Program office, the lead editor of the U.S. section of the report. "Diporeia is a real concern. The decline is so dramatic that we're worried about what it will do to the food web and the upper-level fisheries." The disappearance of the diporeia is closely tied to the arrival of the zebra mussel, which invaded the Great Lakes in the 1980s, transported in the ballast water of an ocean-going ship. In some places, such as southern Lake Michigan, scud have been wiped out. Between 1994 and 2000, scud declined 68 percent in Lake Michigan, Nalepa said. They can still be found from Racine, Wis., to Waukegan--but they have vanished from Chicago, Gary and along Michigan's shoreline. The problem has spread to more lakes over the last several years. "Now that they're gone, fish have to find other things to feed on," Nalepa said. "Some are changing their forage patterns and moving to deeper water, looking for food. When they do find food, it's in water that is colder than they're used to." The lack of diporeia has altered the feeding patterns of many lake fish, especially whitefish, which are getting so skinny that fillets are hard to come by. Biologists have found zebra mussel shells in the stomachs of whitefish, which means the fish are eating the less nutritious and hard-to-digest mussels instead of the scud. Still, researchers can't pinpoint the problem. Thumbnail-size zebra mussels sit on top of sediment and filter the food before it settles to the bottom. But though scud seem hard to kill--they can live on their fat for 90 days without food--they are still dying off. Another confusing development is that the seemingly healthy scuds, which live in the top two centimeters of sediment, are dying off at different rates. In 1992, in southeastern Lake Michigan, they perished within six months, Nalepa said. But just a short distance away, near Muskegon and Grand Haven, Mich., they've been declining over five years. "We're looking for a disease vector and there are things in the animal's body, but the incidence rate is less than 5 percent," Nalepa said. "It just doesn't make sense that an animal that is not infected is dying off completely."
"Evaluating changes in winter climatology and hydrology of
the Lake Michigan basin from 1948 to 2000" Erin Argyilan, Ph.D.
Candidate, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences - University
of Illinois at Chicago For more information, contact: |
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August 20, 2003Contents 1) New ANS Fact Sheet - Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species
List 1) New ANS Fact Sheet - Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species List A new Fact Sheet has been added to the GLERL series describing
the Great Lakes Aquatic Nonindigenous Species List - the first product
of the new NOAA National Center for Invasive Species at GLERL. The
fact sheet is available 'print-on-demand' at GLERL's website - please
help us advertise this new effort. Check the fact sheet out at:
2) New ANS Web Page - National Center for Research on Aquatic
Invasive Species 3) GLERL to Hire a Research Aquatic Biologist The following position vacancy is open until September 2. Dave is looking for a recent Ph.D. in biology to work on a new study of invertebrate resting egg response to various biocides, and to assist with various aspects of my other ballast tank/aquatic invasive species projects. Peter Landrum and Hank Vanderploeg are co-investigators of the Resting Egg study. POSTDOCTORAL AQUATIC (INVERTEBRATE) RESEARCH BIOLOGIST-GREAT LAKES The position will focus on laboratory and field-based studies of resting eggs of various aquatic invertebrates and their toxicological responses to selected biocides. Position also involves, to a lesser degree, assessment of biological implications of ballast tank flow dynamics based on outcome of models being developed in conjunction with the Navy, research related to the biological implications of ballast tank management practices, and participation in the development of a nonindigenous species database for the Great Lakes. The incumbent will also help develop proposals for new studies related to prevention of aquatic species invasions. These studies will generally be focused on the Great Lakes, but may be applicable to other coastal ecosystems. Functional knowledge of aquatic invertebrate biology, basic oceanographic and limnologic instrument use, field sample collection techniques, microscopy, and laboratory culture methods, as well as familiarity with aquatic toxicology and bioassay methods, statistical analyses, and computer programming, are required. See the following GLERL web sites for additional programmatic information: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov; http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Programs/nsmain.html. Application MUST be made on-line through the Department of Commerce's
“Commerce Opportunities On-Line (COOL)” system at 4) Ecological Forecasting Workshop |
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July 15, 2003Many of the articles in this issue of GLERL Update are excerpted from articles prepared for GLERL Notes, GLERL's inhouse newsletter...Thanks to Laura Newlin and all the contributors. Contents 1. NOAA Establishes National Center for Research on Aquatic
Invasive Species "Each year, aquatic invasive species wreak billions of dollars in damages on the U.S. economy, much of which is passed on to the consumer", said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph. D. Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. "If we are to effectively deal with this threat, we must coordinate our science in order to provide the best information and most appropriate ways to reduce the impact of invasive species and stem their spread, or prevent introduction of new ones." Under NOAA's plan, the agency's National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species will be established at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. Lautenbacher said there were many reasons GLERL was selected, including:
Lautenbacher said the center will work across NOAA under the matrix management approach he recently implemented throughout the agency. Center director, David Reid, a senior physical scientist who has served at GLERL since 1985, will develop programs and priorities with a team representing the three units of NOAA that carry out NOAA's marine science mission: NOAA Research, NOAA Ocean Service and NOAA Fisheries. Reid will also be a member of NOAA's aquatic invasive species matrix management team. Stephen Brandt, acting deputy assistant administrator of NOAA Research and GLERL director, said that the center will establish NOAA regional coordinators in six major aquatic coastal regions around the United States, ensuring that the coordination would be NOAA-wide and fully national in scope. Since NOAA co-chairs the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Force, the research identified by the center will be easily coordinated with the research priorities identified by the task force and the Invasive Species Council, Brandt said. Lautenbacher noted that Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Canadian federal department with a mission closest to NOAA's, expressed interest in the center when he described it during a visit to Ottawa in May. In early June DFO indicated plans to develop a similar Canadian Aquatic Invasive Species Research Centre and expressed the desire to have the two centers work cooperatively. Brandt said that GLERL's close proximity to Canada and its many interactions with the Canadian scientific community will help develop links between the NOAA Center and the new Canadian Centre sought by the DFO. 2. GLERL Hosts NOAA Regionalization Workshop Twenty six participants representing five NOAA Line Offices and 16 programs/entities within the agency gathered at GLERL on June 3rd for a day-long workshop aimed at improving and deepening communication and cooperation among NOAA line office components in the Great Lakes region. The effort, one of five pilot programs, is being initiated in response to NOAA Program Review Team (PRT) Recommendation 54 that NOAA develop a number of pilot regional coordination programs. The purpose of such regional coordination will be to:
Regional Coordinators in key states or cities will work cooperatively to identify opportunities for NOAA to achieve better recognition of our corporate image. They will also help NOAA employees develop regional projects with other NOAA programs. The Great Lakes workshop featured a series of overview presentations
by various NOAA line office components in the region including the
National Weather Service (NWS), National Ocean Service (NOS), National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS),
the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Office of Oceanic
and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and from NOAA headquarters. Following
the presentations, participants selected five members of a Great
Lakes Regional Steering Committee (one from each line-office) to
represent their respective line office and spearhead the coordination.
GLERL Director Stephen Brandt was selected as the overall NOAA Regional
Coordinator for the Great Lakes region. The remainder of the workshop
consisted of a brainstorming session and discussion to identify
specific steps to improve coordination and dissemination of the
corporate NOAA image to the public through the press and outreach
activities. Over 20 recommendations were made. The Regional Steering
Committee will be For more information contact Steve Brandt (director@glerl.noaa.gov) 3. GLERL Sponsors User Workshop on Ecological Forecasting We've had some cancellations - if you are interested in participating, please contact Rochelle Sturtevant (Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov). 4. Deputy Assistant Secretary Tim Keeney visits GLERL 5. La Jolla, California Ocean Sciences Bowl Team Bound for the Great Lakes Mike Quigley attended the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB) Finals competition held at University California-San Diego and was on hand to present the fourth place prize to a La Jolla High School (California) NOSB team. As part of the 4th place award, the team will receive an all expense-paid trip to the Great Lakes region that is provided courtesy of GLERL, CILER, Michigan Sea Grant, and NOAA’s National Ocean Service. The La Jolla team will fly to Alpena, Michigan on Wednesday, July 30th where they will board GLERL’s Research Vessel Laurentian for a research cruise on Thunder Bay in Lake Huron. They will then travel to the Lake Michigan Field Station for briefings, lab tours and visits to sites of interest through the August 2-3 weekend. They return home on Monday August 4th. 6. Great Lakes Odessey II: Restore the Greatness 7. Lake Michigan Field Station News With the field season well underway, the boats and station are at capacity. The Muskegon River Project has brought a large group of scientists and students to the field station. Many of the winter projects on the R/V Laurentian were focused on improving the science work spaces and resources. Monitors in the remodeled wet lab provide sonar, navigation and closed circuit video information to researchers. Tracklines and station locations can be easily viewed, stored to CD or printed to hard copy. All the old formica surfaces have been replaced with stainless steel which have adjustable frames for securing instruments. In April, U of M Naval Architecture students were provided an opportunity to conduct maneuvering and sea keeping tests on the Laurentian. The ship was fitted with instruments to measure motions in all six degrees of freedom. Thirty stomachs and a tangle of instruments measured the ships response in 5-7 foot seas. Aside from the routine sampling cruises, we have deployed wave gauges for the Army Corps of Engineers, assisted NOAA’s National Buoy Data Center with the repair of the southern basin buoy and have begun to set mooring buoys in the NOS Thunder Bay Sanctuary. We are also providing support to NOAA’s Coast Survey group for hydrographic work within the GL basin. 8. Invasive Zooplankton:GLERL Scientists Join Forces To Investigate The major concern about both species is that they may compete with small fishes, such as larval and young of the year (YOY) alewife and perch, for zooplankton. Hank and post-doctoral researcher Radka Pichlova have conducted feeding experiments to determine prey selection and feeding rates of Cercopagis on different zooplankton, while Doran and University of Michigan professor Ed Rutherford are directing a field project of extensive sampling of zooplankton and larval fishes in Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake. During the 2003 field season, Hank and Doran will be working together to look at spatial distributions of zooplankton, particularly cercopagids, and alewives through the simultaneous use of fish acoustics and the Plankton Survey System (PSS). Dennis Donahue and Steve Ruberg are providing technical assistance and expertise for these cruises. Running the acoustics and PSS together will allow for the simultaneous collection of data on thermal structure, chlorophyll, zooplankton, and fish. Their hope is that this kind of data collection will provide further insight into food-web impacts and interactions, as well as provide more information on the spatial structure of the fish and zooplankton communities of Lake Michigan. 9. GLERL in the News - Water Levels Most models that scientists use to predict water levels show an overall drop as a result of global warming. The changing climate causes the lake temperature to rise and some water to evaporate. Scientist Brent Lofgren says lakes Michigan and Huron face the most significant decreases — one to 1½ metre drops over the next century. The impact on Lake Erie is somewhat less and Lake Ontario the least of all because it is regulated by canal locks. But Lofgren, from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in Ann Arbor, Mich., says the predictions also show increased rainfall over that time. The key question, he says, is which will outpace the other — evaporation or precipitation? “The bottom line is there’s a lot of uncertainty.” 10. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL - Analyses of Floc
Characteristics and Suspended Particle Behavior This seminar will not be recorded (unless I receive a specific request - please give me at least a one week notice). Abstract: In order to understand the transport and deposition of suspended particles, experiments were performed to evaluate the particle behavior under different physico-chemical conditions. Particle size distributions and aggregate geometrical information at different mixing times were obtained using a non-intrusive image analysis technique. The time-varying measurements of floc size and structure were used to determine collision efficiency and floc formation. Changes in aggregate morphology with changes of aggregate properties were evaluated using a fractal approach. The results showed that the floc density decreases and floc porosity increases as floc size increases. A fractal-based aggregate growth model was developed and tested with the measurements. Multi-exposure camera images were used to measure the settling rate of suspended particulate matter and to investigate the orientation of suspended particles during settling. It was found that particle structure and encased and pore volume play a significant role in floc formation and the settling behavior of aggregates. Information on suspended particle size and structure in addition to the solids concentration are important in the control and fate of nutrients and pollutants. 11. New Reprints
12. Staff News Stephen Brandt will be Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator for NOAA Research from June 23 through July 31. This appointment continues a series of rotations of Laboratory Directors to NOAA leadership while the search for a new Assistant Administrator for NOAA Reasearch continues. Cynthia Sellinger will be Acting Director of GLERL during his absence. GLERL Gets It’s First Deputy Director Ms. Sellinger joined GLERL in 1988 as a physical scientist. Her research at GLERL included analytical studies of the hydraulic interaction between the connecting channel and groundwater flows with water levels of the Great Lakes. In 1998, she took on management responsibilities, first being a team-leader for the Data Analysis team, next with working 25% of Laboratory management issues, and then working full time as Assistant to the Director. “I am very happy to be GLERL’s Deputy Director,” says Cynthia, “Although it is a great challenge for me, I really enjoy working with people and getting the job done.” Summer Fellows, Interns and Volunteers |
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June 18, 2003Contents 1. NOAA Great LAkes Seminar Series at GLERL - Climate Thursday, June 19, 2:30 pm The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report (TAR) states that the global climate has warmed approximately 0.6C over the past 100 years and there has been an increase in global precipitation of about 1% per decade. These changes in climate are examined in the context of data sets and research into observed climate change produced at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Furthermore, variations and trends in extreme climate events have only recently received much attention. Exponentially increasing economic losses, coupled with an increase in deaths due to these events, have focused attention on the possibility that these events are increasing in frequency. One of the major problems in examining the climate record for changes in extremes is a lack of high quality long-term data. In this talk we examine a number of data sets data sets produced at the National Climatic Data Center which include the Global Historical Climatology Network, Global Daily Climatology Network (GDCN) data set, blended ocean/land air temperature data and recently digitized daily data for the USA from the first half of the 20th Century. We also examine results from research using these and other data to examine variability and trends in climate mean quantities and climate extremes. These include changes in temperature extremes, such as frost days, and changes in days above and below various percentile thresholds. We also examine results from analyses examining the relationship between observed increases in heavy precipitation and streamflow in the USA. Selected results include an observed decrease in frost days (days with the minimum temperature below 0C), and lengthening of the frost-free season in most parts of the USA. For more information, contact: 2. GLERL to Host National Ocean Sciences Bowl Team Visit, July 30 - August 4 Five students and a teacher from La Jolla High School, La Jolla California will have a first-hand opportunity to learn about Great Lakes science, history, and environmental issues as part of a tour that will take them to GLERL's Lake Michigan Field Station, Muskegon, Michigan and Lake Huron's Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve, Alpena Michigan. The La Jolla group comprised the National Ocean Sciences Bowl team that finished in fourth place during the final competition of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl held in San Diego, California, April 27-28. As the fourth place prize, the Great Lakes trip will include a research cruise on Lake Huron onboard GLERL's Research Vessel Laurentian, lab tours and briefings at the lab's Lake Michigan Field Station and related educational and recreational activities. Team members include Adela Dominique Rahmati, Amy Liao, Drew Lambert, Lisl Eshrick, and Marwa Kaisey. Team coach, Lee Decker teaches advanced biology and ocean sciences at La Jolla High School. The team will fly to Alpena, Michigan on Wednesday, July 30 for the Laurentian research cruise on Thursday, July 31. On Friday, August 1st, the team will travel through northern Michigan with stops at areas of interest to learn about watershed ecology and history. From there, they will travel to the Lake Michigan Field Station in Muskegon for the remainder of their stay, returning home on Monday, August 4th. 3. GLERL Update Feedback Request
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May 28, 2003Contents 1. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL Thursday, May 8 "A Changing Lake Erie Fish Community: Unraveling the Mechanisms Involved" Speaker: Dr. Stuart A. Ludsin, NOAA/GLERL, Ann Arbor, Michigan. VIDEO ARCHIVE AVAILABLE: ftp://ftp.glerl.noaa.gov/webcast/2003/ludsin/20030508.wmv Tuesday, May 13 “The Importance of the Microbial Food Web in C- and P- Transport through the Base of Great Lakes Food Webs” Speaker: Dr. Robert T. Heath, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Archive anticipated shortly. Thursday, May 29 "Beach Profiles Along Lake Erie" Speaker: Dr. Tom Lippmann, Ohio State University, Byrd Polar Research Center, Columbus, Ohio. Seminar will be recorded for the archive. Monday, June 2, Noon at GLERL. "Characterization of Hydrodynamics using HGM and Ecoregions in Southeastern, Michigan " Speaker: David H. Merkey, M.L.A, CILER, University of Michigan. Please request of Rochelle Sturtevant if you would like this seminar recorded. Monday, June 2, 3-5pm. Location: Room 1040 Dana Bldg, 430 East University Ave., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Featured keynote presentation for the University of Michigan's Symposium on Aquatic Nuisance Species Research. (A reception will follow in the Dana Commons.) "Predicting the Occurrence and Impact of Species Invasions in the Great Lakes" Speaker: Dr. Anthony Ricciardi, Redpath Museum & McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal. CILER plans to record this seminar, it may be available through the GLERL web archive (if formats are compatible). 2. AQUATIC NUISANCE SPECIES SYMPOSIUM - Monday / June 2, 2003 / 3-5 pm The State of Michigan has declared May 31 through June 7, 2003 "Aquatic Nuisance Species Awareness Week" to raise awareness about prevention and control of aquatic nuisance species (ANS) in Michigan and Great Lakes waters. In observance of Aquatic Nuisance Species Awareness Week, the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan will host a Symposium on Aquatic Nuisance Species Research on Monday, June 2, from 3-5 pm in room 1040 Dana Bldg. on the University of Michigan's central campus. A reception will follow in the Dana Commons. Program
Displays by the Michigan Sea Grant College Program, the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the State of Michigan Office of the Great Lakes, the NOAA/Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center (invited) can be viewed in the Dana Commons prior to the symposium and during the reception. Directions to the Dana Building are available on the SNRE web site.
For more information contact: 3. From NOAA Headquarters: New Program Manager for the NOAA Research Joint Institute (including CILER) Beginning May 1st, Dr. John Cortinas became the interim Program Manager for the NOAA Research Joint Institute (JI) Program. He has already relocated to NOAA Research headquarters in Silver Spring. John replaces Marilyn Moll, who devoted a large part of her government career to this position. Marilyn will continue to work with OAR and NESDIS to help establish JIs within NESDIS. As part of the effort by NOAA Research to continue improving the JI program, it was decided to relocate the Program Manager position back to Silver Spring and increase the responsibilities of this position. These changes will produce several benefits for NOAA Research headquarters, the Laboratories, and the JIs. The primary benefit will be the location of someone at NOAA Research headquarters that understands the JI program and can quickly and efficiently interact with organizations in the Washington area, such as the NOAA Research executive management, DOC Legal Counsel, NOAA executive management and the NOAA Grants Office. Effective immediately, the JI Program Manager will be the primary headquarters contact for all JI issues. John can be reached at 301-745-2465 ext:206. John has extensive JI and NOAA experience that will contribute to continuing the success of this program. Prior to the NOAA Research position, John served as the Assistant Director for the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma for the previous two years and as a research scientist at CIMMS since 1992. John also gained valuable knowledge about the federal system by being located at NSSL, where he interacted with the NSSL management team extensively. His experiences in the federal system, the university system, and scientific research will be an asset to this program. 4. Steve Brandt to be Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator at OAR Headquarters GLERL Director Dr. Steve Brandt will be Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator in Washington D.C. from June 22 through July 31. This is part of a series of rotations by OAR lab directors to cover OAR headquarters while a search for a new Assistant Administrator for OAR continues. Louisa Koch is expected to return as Deputy on 1 August. During this period Cynthia Sellinger will be Acting Director of GLERL. 5. Great Lakes ANS List On-line A list of the 162 aquatic nonindigenous species documented in the Great Lakes by Mills et al (1993) and Ricciardi (2001) is now available on the web at: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Programs/invasive/ A link for additional information about each species is included if available and will be updated as we find more. Additional species will be added as they are identified and confirmed in published peer-reviewed literature, or for which we have reliable professional confirmation that can be cited. We plan to convert the list to an expanded searchable database with room for much more information later this year. Comments, corrections, suggestions, and queries can be sent to: GreatLakes.ANS@noaa.gov 6. GLERL in the News: Lake Levels Despite water levels on Lake St. Clair that are a foot-and-a-half below average, Macomb County marinas from Harrison Township to St. Clair Shores are doing booming business. That's because experienced boaters are shrugging off the difficulties they're facing in trying to get to open water. Still, the shrinking lake levels could imperil a local boating industry that, when healthy, is worth millions of dollars to the Macomb County economy, from St. Clair Shores to north of Selfridge Air National Guard Base. The dropped levels forecast by the Great Lakes Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers come amid other challenges for Macomb boaters, including fluctuating fuel prices and iffy weather. The water level can help or hurt a boating season, said Cynthia Sellinger, a hydrologist at the Great Lakes Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. She expects Lake St. Clair to be 17 inches below average through fall. The main impact of low water levels is people getting in and out of their boat slips, Sellinger said. "Once they get out, they're OK," she said. "The big freighters are having some problems navigating in these conditions, but not boaters." Michigan's receding lake levels will eventually mean higher prices for products that travel by freighter, such as salt. "For every inch of water (the shippers don't have), they have to carry 100 less tons. So if we're down eight, nine, 10 inches, we're looking at 1,000 tons (less)," said Dean Haen, port director of the Port of Green Bay, which gets its salt from Detroit freighters. "That's 7 percent less cargo per ship." After low water levels, "the weather is the second-biggest variable" to having a successful boating season in Macomb, said Mike LeFevre, owner of Jack's Waterfront Restaurant in St. Clair Shores. "Last year was a fabulous year because there was only one full weekend of rain." 7. GLERL Hot Items - Great Lakes Issues Workshop The focus of this workshop was to identify major issues within the Great Lakes compatible with CSCOR’s goals and mission and to providescientific information to assist decision makers in meeting the challenges of managing our nation's coastal resources. Based on data collected over the past few years, the participants at the workshop agreed that new and continuing water quality and ecosystem health issues persist within the lakes and remain a challenge to managers. Over the past 15 years the rate of species invasion into the Great Lakes has accelerated with substantial impacts on food webs and cycling of nutrients. The benthic food web and associated processes are very different from the 1980s and earlier. The most obvious example of these changes resulted from the introduction of zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) in the early 1990s. They fundamentally altered energy transfer and nutrient cycling in the lakes and have been identified as a primary cause of the appearance of hazardous algal blooms of Microcystis, increased depletion of oxygen, and increased water clarity with resultant blooms of benthic macrophytes, such as Cladophora. The strategy developed to manage the lakes by titrating phosphorus loads to set levels of chlorophyll did not anticipate or include alteration of key processes in this ecosystem. Given these recent perturbations and changes in community structure, the nutrient management strategy for the Great Lakes needs to be reexamined from a total ecosystem perspective. The models used in the 1970s to set nutrient input levels were first generation, but proved successful in forecasting lake response into the 1990s. Some recent data may imply that lake phosphorus concentrations are diverging from predictions. We now have a better understanding of how ecosystems work and need to improve the models by adding better physics, refined chemical and biological processes, incorporate the upper food chain, and importantly add new ecological components which were not present in the 1970s. Improved hydrodynamic models are now able to provide reliable information on lake circulation, transport of nutrients, and system-wide thermal structure The importance of episodic events, land-lake coupling, and fundamental changes in nutrient dynamics and food webs need to be incorporated into a next generation of lake management tools. Concurrently, the validity of state-of-the-art models needs to be evaluated to test the validity and robustness of their outputs. This can be done in hindcast and forecast modes. Extensive databases, derived from research and monitoring programs that often extend back into the 1970s, can be used to test hindcast simulations. Furthermore, reasonably good meteorological data from approximately the past 50 years is available to drive circulation and thermal simulations. Recommendations The consensus of this workshop is that a new concerted research
effort is needed to examine then impacts of recent ecological changes
in the Great Lakes on water quality. Key questions include: The Great Lakes ecosystem is the most clearly definable regional entity under NOAA’s purview and mission responsibilities, contains a suite of environmental stresses common to all coastal systems, and has a long history of bi-national and interagency partnerships and collaborations. Thus, the Great Lakes have the greatest potential for success in testing any regional approaches and for the development of ecosystem forecasting tools. Complete copies of the workshop report have been posted to the
web sites More information: 8. GLERL Hot Items - Aquatic Invasive Species / Other Research Topics at Rouge River Festival GLERL and Michigan Sea Grant partnered in a presentation at the 2003 Rouge River Water Festival on May 2, 2003 at the Dearborn Campus of the University of Michigan. The Rouge River Water Festival is an daylong event for 5th grade classes from the Detroit area. The annual festival typically draws nearly 3,000 students (100+ classes from 50+ schools), many from the inner-city Detroit region. Last year GLERL and Sea Grant partnered in producing an interactive exhibit for the festival, this year we opted for the more in-depth opportunities provided through the presentation format. Rochelle Sturtevant, the Great Lakes Sea Grant Extension Agent at GLERL, organized the joint hands-on presentation which was delivered by Nancy Morehead (GLERL technical staff), John Schwartz (MI Sea Grant Extension Program Leader) and Steve Stewart (MI Sea Grant educator). The presentation included a variety of topics relating to the Great Lakes including lake bathymetry, meteorological data, waterlife and exotic species. Students particularly enjoyed the Great Lakes quiz board, looking at live organisms on the video-microscope, Great Lakes wave animations and looking at preserved specimens of ‘alien invaders’. |
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April 11, 2003Contents 1. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL - Benthic Algal Community Functional and Structural Shifts in the Near-Shore Algal Community of the Great Lakes: The Response to Exotic Mussels. Speaker: Dr. Rex L. Lowe, Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH VIDEO ARCHIVE AVAILABLE: Low Resolution: High resolution: (dowload only between 5pm and 8am!): The video archive has now been streamlined into the main GLERL seminars page. For complete access to recorded seminars, see http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/news/seminars/pastseminars.html 2. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL - Upcoming Seminars Thursday, May 8 "A changing Lake Erie fish community: unraveling the mechanisms involved" Dr. Stuart A. Ludsin, GLERL Tuesday, May 13 “The importance of the microbial food web in C- and P- transport through the base of Great Lakes food webs” Dr. Robert T. Heath, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Thursday, May 29 "Beach profiles along Lake Erie" Dr. Tom Lippman, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 3. GLERL Fact Sheets On-Line GLERL's web page for Print-on-Demand fact sheets has been revised. It isn't as pretty as before, but it loads a lot faster and all the newest versions of the fact sheets (including all the ANS ones that Sea Grant folks helped review last fall) are there now. http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/brochures/ 4. New Way to Access GLERL Publications Research by Researcher (http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Profiles/) - Directory organized by researcher with interest areas links to a research profile and a listing of all publications by that researchers. Updated approximately every six months. Research publications can also be accessed by chronological listing
at http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/.
Research for select topic areas (Fisheries, ANS, Climate Change
and Contaminants) can be accessed at 5. New Reprints - Ice, Diporeia, Resuspension, Fish Assel, Cronk and Norton. 2003. Recent trends in Laurentian Great Lakes ice cover. Climactic Change 57:185-204 Landrum, Lotufo, Gossiaux, Gedeon, and Lee. 2003. Bioaccumulation and critical body residues of PAHs in the amphipod Diporeia spp.: additional evidence to support toxicity additivity for PAH mixtures. Chemosphere 41:481-489. Peacor. 2003. Phenotypic modifications to conspecific density arising from predation risk assessment. Oikos 100(2)409-415. Miller, McCormick, Saylor, Murthy and Rao. 2002. Temporal and spatial variability of the resuspension coastal plume in southern Lake Michigan inferred from ADCP backscatter. Verh. Internat. Verin. Limnol. 28:513-518. Mora, Chittaro, Sale, Kritzer, and Ludsin. 2003. Pattern and processes in reef fish diversity. Nature 42:933-936. 6. New Fact Sheet - Ice Cover |
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April 1, 2003Contents 1. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL - Benthic Algal Community Functional and Structural Shifts in the Near-Shore Algal Community of the Great Lakes: The Response to Exotic Mussels. Speaker: Dr. Rex L. Lowe, Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH VIDEO ARCHIVE AVAILABLE: Low Resolution: High resolution: (dowload only between 5pm and 8am!): 2. GLERL Fact Sheets On-Line GLERL's web page for Print-on-Demand fact sheets has been revised.
It isn't as pretty as before, but it loads a lot faster and all
the newest versions of the fact sheets (including all the ANS ones
that Sea Grant folks helped review last fall) are there now. 3. New Way to Access GLERL Publications Research by Researcher (http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Profiles/) - Directory organized by researcher with interest areas links to a research profile and a listing of all publications by that researchers. Updated approximately every six months. Research publications can also be accessed by chronological listing
at http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/.
Research for select topic areas (Fisheries, ANS, Climate Change
and Contaminants) can be accessed at |
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March 12, 2003Contents: 1. GLERL in the News - Zebra mussels, diporeia It's a food-chain fight, and the fish we love to catch are losing. Scientists believe a cousin of the pesky zebra mussel, the quagga mussel, is in the midst of a population explosion that endangers the food chain in Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes. The quagga is larger and can live in deeper water than the zebra, adding to the potential havoc. Researchers have always suspected there's a link between zebra mussels and the declining health of Lake Michigan's whitefish population. As the mussels proliferate, they take food away from creatures who themselves are important lake menu items. Both zebras and quaggas filter-feed tiny food particles. So does diporeia, a tiny shrimplike creature that is a favored food of many Great Lakes fish, including the whitefish. So far, the diporeia appear to be losing. Tom Nalepa, a research biologist at NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Ann Arbor, is part of a research team trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing diporeia. He said diporeia have largely vanished from large areas in Lake Michigan. Nalepa suspects it's because zebra mussels are intercepting diporeia's food; the areas where diporeia have disappeared roughly coincide with the shallow waters where zebra mussels have proliferated. But what's confounding scientists is the fact the diporeia are also vanishing in the shallow waters where there aren't any zebra mussels. "It's maddening, not knowing the cause of the decline," said Nalepa. "It seems to be food, but the exact mechanism is unclear." Zebra mussels like shallow water and are rarely found in water deeper than 150 feet. Quagga mussels can live in shallow water as well as deep, cold waters. That means diporeia's competitors are spreading in all lake depths. When feeding, zebra and quagga mussels suck in a lot more food than they can eat and spit out what they don't need. Diporeia, not surprisingly, won't eat what the mussels have spit out. And there's not much left in the water to eat once the mussels are finished. With their preferred food diporeia disappearing, whitefish have switched to eating zebra mussels. Zebra mussels are harder to get at and aren't nearly as nutritious as diporeia were, so the whitefish are maturing more slowly and getting skinnier and skinnier, said Nalepa. Nalepa said the same scenario could be extended into the lake's deep waters by the quagga mussel. In that case, the quagga mussels would be robbing a deep-water fish called sculpin of their food. Lake trout feed on sculpin, so reduced sculpin populations would in turn likely mean a decrease in the numbers of lake trout. Three years ago, zebra mussels outnumbered the slightly larger quagga mussels 20 to 1. The ratio now is closer to 3 to 1, say scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's likely the faster-reproducing quagga mussels will soon vastly outnumber zebra mussels in Lake Michigan, as they do already in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Quagga mussels now outnumber zebra mussels 10 to 1 in some spots in western Lake Erie. For now, more quagga mussels doesn't mean there will be fewer zebra mussels. "It's not as if the zebra mussel population will stop growing, it's just that the quagga mussel population will expand more rapidly than zebra mussels," said Nalepa. Eventually, zebra mussel numbers could start falling, he said. 2. GLERL in the NEWS - Water Levels Lake Michigan is about as low as it's been in a half-century...The lakes have been receding since 1997 in the latest example of what scientists call a healthy and natural cycle. Some lakes are approaching record low levels. Lakes Michigan and Huron - essentially the same lake but pinched to a narrow channel by Michigan's peninsulas - have dropped 3 1/2 feet. Their February level was 576.64 feet above the Great Lakes "datum," a measuring stick that starts in the lakes' outlet in the St. Lawrence River. The record low for February was 576.15 feet in 1964, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The reason for the decline is evaporation, and especially winter evaporation, said hydrologist Cynthia Sellinger of the agency's Great Lakes Environmental Research Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Since 1997 there was the strongest El Nino on record and then there was a two-year La Nina," she said. "With both of those we got warmer temperatures in the Great Lakes region." Warmer winters have kept ice from forming to block evaporation except along the shore, Sellinger said. The water, retaining heat from summer, is warmer than the air above it and so rises with the warmth into the air. Industry groups constantly calling her for a forecast get a one-word answer: lower. Sellinger says shippers tell her they lose between $11,000 and $22,000 a day for every inch the water drops. Drought? Yes. Call it an irony of science, but the Great Lakes region - home of the world’s largest collection of fresh surface water - remains entrenched in a drought. Even as our shoes are soaked from melting snow, researchers say wells are going dry and they predict the lakes will be down 8 to 13 inches this summer. The region rode the high water levels for 30 years until the lakes plunged in the late 1990s. Experts are puzzled as to whether global warming is is the cause or merely a contributing factor. "We were right on average February to June, then hit a dry spell," said Tim Calappi, physical scientist for the Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit. Compounding the problem this winter was an usually dry January: Lake Huron, which replenishes Lake Erie, had a little more than one-third of an inch of precipitation that month. Its norm is 2.09 inches for that month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes lab in Ann Arbor. Lake Erie had 1.54 inches of precipitation for January, below its norm of 2.44 inches. The Great Lakes region has been under a drought "off and on since at least 1999," Cynthia Sellinger, NOAA hydrologist, said. "The last six to eight months, it’s been really strong," she added. The silver lining: Things could have been a whole lot worse if this winter hadn’t been so cold. Sustained arctic-like temperatures froze Lake Erie, sealing it off from further evaporation. None of the other Great Lakes froze over, but each came close - even venerable Lake Superior, which rarely freezes because it is so large and deep. It had only limited patches of open water. About 90 percent of Lake Huron’s surface was frozen, said Mr. Calappi and Ms. Sellinger. The region is not likely to have much flooding, unless it gets thunderstorms that last for days and the heavy rain falls while the ground is still frozen, they said. Wells are low. Therefore, most of the melted snow will have places to go once the soil thaws. That, at least, should help replenish groundwater supplies, they said. An exception could be in some cities, where pavement blocks water flows. Bob Stevenson, Toledo utilities director, said city crews have been clearing catch basins and storm drains in hopes of keeping the sewage network from being overwhelmed. "Normally the rule of thumb on snow melt is if it melts in its normal course and is gradual, there’s no issue. If we get a 60-degree day and it melts all in one day, we will have a lot of runoff," he said. The long-term outlook isn’t too promising: Forecasters call for below-normal precipitation through at least May, Ms. Sellinger said. "And you never know. [We] might have a really wet spring. But the winter has been really dry," she said. 3. Staff News Laura Newlin joins GLERL staff as Office Automation Clerk in the Director's office. |
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February 27, 2003Contents 1. News from EEGLE EEGLE (Episodic Events Great Lakes Experiment), one of GLERL's largest and most visible research programs, drew to a close last year. EEGLE was developed to focus on a critical theme: the importance of episodic events on nearshore-offshore transport and subsequent ecological consequences. The program, which spaned five years, was jointly funded by NOAA/COP and NSF/OCE. In addition to the more than 40 papers already published, findings from the EEGLE research will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. As a follow-up to EEGLE, GLERL's Brian Eadie organized a NOAA Great Lakes Issue Identification Workshop in January with the goal of identifying and prioritizing a list of Great Lakes research issues compatible with CSCOR goals. 2. GLERL in the News - Ice This winter's frigid temperatures have frozen most of Michigan's lakes, streams and rivers for the first time in years. Much of Lake Erie, the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River and Lake Huron are more frozen than they have been in several years. "There's certainly more ice cover than we've seen the last five or six years," said Ray Assel, a physical scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During an average Michigan winter, about 70 percent of Lake Superior would be covered by ice, Assel said. But because of the lake's 483-foot depth, it doesn't completely ice over. Likewise, about 70 percent of Lake Huron will, typically, be covered by ice during winter. Its 195-foot depth, like Superior and the 279-foot deep Michigan, usually prevents it from completely icing over. Besides its depth, Lake Michigan's large surface area limits ice cover to the northern end and around the shoreline areas farther south. Lake Ontario, which is 283 feet deep but not as far north as the others, also doesn't ice up completely. Ice almost always forms on Lake Erie, because its maximum depth is only 62 feet. "In fact, it's big news when it doesn't form an ice cover," Assel said. That was the case for Lake Erie last year. This year's freeze is noteworthy because last winter was so mild, Assel said. Last week, the Coast Guard declared West Grand Traverse Bay frozen for the first time in seven years. This also is the first winter since 1996 that Ed Wells and the four other ice fishermen from Traverse City have been able to ice fish on Grand Traverse Bay. It is frozen nearly to Northport. Ferry service to Harsens Island was interrupted for a couple of
days earlier this week by frozen water. Early Sunday, a wall of
ice from Lake Huron blocked access to the island, said Nancy Bryson,
office manager of Champion's Auto Ferry, which offers ferry service
between Harsens Island and Algonac. "It took nine hours to
break a path through the ice," Bryson said. "I heard the
ice is wall-to-wall, no gaps, up past Lexington," Bryson said.
"There's a lot of ice out there, Same for the Straits of Mackinac. Ferries to and from Mackinac Island were able to run all winter long in 2002, the first time since Arnold Lines was founded in 1978. This winter the ferries stopped running on Jan. 21, which is about the normal date for the ice bridge to form between the island and St. Ignace. "Usually, we start running again toward the end of March or early April," said Bob Brown, general manager of Arnold Lines. "This year it could be a little later." "We're surrounded by it," Brown said. "Usually, there's some open water on the east side of the island." Chief Warrant Officer Pete Louzao, of the Coast Guard, said there are only one or two freighters on the Great Lakes these days. They radio Coast Guard cutters when they need help getting through. Even the U.S. Coast Guard's ice cutting crews have been surprised by the mounting ice pack. One Coast Guard crew recently encountered ice more than 2 feet thick off Lake Erie's Point Pelee. One crew said it ran into windblown ice formations that stood 20 feet high. "They took pictures of it," said Louzao. He said seeing solid white sheets of ice as far as the eye can see is a bit prettier than the view of miles of murky lake water. 3. New Reprints - CoastWatch, Toxicity testing Hwang, H., S.W. Fisher, K. Kim, P.F. Landrum, R.J. Larson, and D.J. Versteeg. Assessing the toxicity of dodecylbenzene sulfonate to the midge Chironomus riparius using body residues as the dose metric. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 22(2):302-312 (2003). Leshkevich, G.A., and S. Liu. Environmental monitoring of Lake Michigan using CoastWatch data and JAVA GIS. Proceedings, Lake Michigan State of the Lake 2001, Muskegon, MI, November 6-7, 2001. U.S. EPA, Grand Valley State University, 34 pp. (2002). Wilcoxen, S.E., P.G. Meier, and P.F. Landrum. The toxicity of fluoranthene to Hyalella azteca in sediment and water only exposures under varying light spectra. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 54:105-117 (2003). 4. Staff News Dr. Jim Bence (MSU) joins GLERL as a distinguished visiting scientist for the first half of 2003. Jim is working on several projects including a cross-Lakes comparison of salmonine communities and top-down effects as well as a detailed evaluation of alewife and bloater dynamics in Lake Michigan. Marc Collins (EMU student) is working with Brian Eadie and Margaret Lansing on biogenic silica analyses of sediment trap samples. Sharon Edgington is new to the front office - she will most likely be the voice on the line when you call the main GLERL number. GLERL Awards - GLERL's annual awards ceremony took place on February 4th. This year's awards included: Publishing Productivity - Gary Fahnenstiel (6 peer-reviewed and 2 other manuscripts) and Mike McCormick (3 peer-reviewed, 2 in-press and 2 submitted); Scientific Leadership - Doran Mason (for external collaborations); Leadership - Tom Croley (international activities relating to hydrology of the Great Lakes), Peter Landrum (for the GLERL contaminants program); Steve Ruberg (for the wireless environmental observatory). |
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February 18, 2003GLERL in the News - Chicora A February 3 story in the South Bend Tribune describes plans to continue the search for the shipwreck Chicora and the help that GLERL scientist Dave Schwab has provided to the expedition. New Faces Tavares Ford joins the GLERL Data Analysis team at the end of February. Tavares has a computer information systems degree from Florida A&M University and his most recent work experience was at Apple Computer. Tavares will initially be working with Nathan Hawley, Doran Mason and Dave Schwab. |
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January 31, 2003Contents: 1. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL With apologies, Dr. Tamburri's seminar, "Ballast Water Deoxygenation Can Prevent Aquatic Introductions While Reducing Ship Corrosion" cannot be made available via webcast because it contains proprietary/confidential information associated with a patent application. 2. GLERL in the News - Lake Levels Ice is forming on most of the Great Lakes, reducing evaporation of water. But it may not be enough to help lake levels this summer. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts all of the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair likely will drop from their 2002 summer levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's lakes forecast calls for levels to be the same or lower than last summer. Heavy snows for the remainder of the winter, a rainy spring -- or both -- could change the prediction and boost lake levels. The reason for the bleak water level forecast is a lack of rain this past fall followed by a below-average snowfall so far this winter in the Lake Superior basin, which is crucial to replenishing the lower lakes with melting snow. Lakes Michigan and Huron could drop 6 inches this summer, Lake Erie may fall 9 inches and Lake St. Clair may go down 7 inches. Cynthia Sellinger, a hydrologist with NOAA who has forecast lakes to stay the same as last summer or drop slightly, said it is difficult to predict which way the lakes will go. "We look at normal temperatures and normal precipitation to help us but everything has been abnormal the last five years," she said.
and The good news to her and other Great Lakes watchers is that the
evaporation cycle has been broken by the cold snap. "Absolutely,"
Ms. Sellinger said. "[Having Lake Erie freeze] is the best
thing that could have happened." The bad news: The National
Weather Service is predicting above-average temperatures and below-average
precipitation in the coming months. If that proves to be true, she
said, lake levels will invariably be lower than they were last summer
- the only 3. New reprints - Coastal exchange and Climate Murthy, C.R., Y.R. Rao, M.J. McCormick, G.S. Miller, and J.H. Saylor. Coastal exchange characteristics during unstratified season in southern Lake Michigan. Verh. Internat. Verin. Limnol 28:299-302 (2002). Rao, Y.R., C.R. Murthy, M.J. McCormick, G.S. Miller, and J.H. Saylor. Observations of circulation and coastal exchange characteristics in southern Lake Michigan during 2000 winter season. Geophysical Research Letters 29(13):9-1 to 9-4 (2002). Lofgren, B.M., F.H. Quinn, A.H. Clites, R.A. Assel, A.J. Eberhardt, and C.L. Luukkonen. Evaluation of potential impacts on Great Lakes water resources based on climate scenarios of two GCMs. Journal of Great Lakes Research 28(4):537-554 (2002). |
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January 15, 2003Contents 1. NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series at GLERL Ballast Water Deoxygenation Can Prevent Aquatic Introductions While
Reducing Ship Corrosion Abstract: One of the most important mechanisms for the introduction of aquatic nuisance species is transport in ship ballast waters. Although several ballast tank treatments to prevent transport of aquatic organisms appear promising, all existing approaches will result in significant costs to the shipping industry. This seminar will describe a treatment that can dramatically reduce the survivorship of most organisms found in ballast waters while providing economic benefits to ship owners. Purging of oxygen from ballast tanks with nitrogen was recently found to be a cost-effective technique for reducing corrosion and therefore extending ship life. We tested the tolerance of larvae of known invasive invertebrate species to low levels of oxygen, comparable to those resulting from this anticorrosion treatment, and detected significant levels of mortality. Two separate literature reviews further support the conclusion that few organisms will be able to withstand extended periods of exposure to nitrogen treated ballast water. This novel deoxygenation technique may therefore have direct benefits to both marine conservation and the shipping industry. Currently investigation are being initiated to optimize the oxygen stripping process, to examine Microbially Influenced Corrosion under hypoxia, and to examine deoxygenations's effectiveness at removing ballast water organisms onboard active vessels. 2. GLERL Climate and Climate Change Resources New on the Sea Grant at GLERL website - a bibliography (with links
to abstracts, resources, etc) for climate and climate change resources
available at GLERL. See: 3. GLERL Researcher Profiles New on the GLERL website - researcher profiles. Profiles include contact info, research interests, CV, list of projects, publications and recent presentations. Looking for an expert to give a presentation on a specific Great Lakes topic? Try browsing here for ideas. 4. Reprint - Climate change Lofgren, B.M., F.H. Quinn, A.H. Clites, R.A. Assel, A.J. Eberhardt, and C.L. Luukkonen. Evaluation of potential impacts on Great Lakes water resources based on climate scenarios of two GCMs. Journal of Great Lakes Research 28(4):537-554 (2002). 5. GLERL Visiting Scientists Two applications for visiting scientists have been approved. |
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