Determining preferences for ecosystem benefits in Great Lakes Areas of Concern from photographs posted to social media

Relative valuation of potentially affected ecosystem benefits can increase the legitimacy and social acceptance of ecosystem restoration projects. As an alternative or supplement to traditional methods of deriving beneficiary preference, we downloaded from social media and classified ≈ 21,000 photographs taken in two Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOC), the St. Louis River and the Milwaukee Estuary.Our motivating presumption was that the act of taking a photograph constitutes some measure of the photographer's individual preference for, or choice of, the depicted subject matter among myriad possible subject matter. Overall, 17% of photos downloaded from the photo-sharing sites Flickr, Instagram, and Panoramio depicted an ecosystem benefit of the AOC. Percent of photographs depicting a benefit and the photographs' subject matter varied between AOCs and among photo-sharing sites. Photos shared on Instagram were less user-gender biased than other photo-sharing sites and depicted active recreation (e.g., trail use) more frequently than passive recreation (e.g., landscape viewing). Local users shared more photos depicting a benefit than non-local users. The spatial distribution of photograph locations varied between photos depicting and not depicting a benefit, and identified areas within AOCs from which few photographs were shared. As a source of beneficiary preference information, we think Instagram has some advantages over the other photo-sharing sites. When combined with other information, spatially-explicit relative valuation derived from aggregate social preference can be translated into information and knowledge useful for Great Lakes restoration decision making.     

Stewardship after delisting: Sustaining long-term progress in Michigan’s Areas of Concern

The Michigan Areas of Concern (AOC) program has made significant progress in recent years following the influx of external funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Great Lakes Legacy Act. However, as more AOCs near delisting, community members from Michigan Public Advisory Councils (PACs) are concerned that the loss of programmatic funding will constrain their ability to sustain key public engagement and long-term restoration progress. In order to understand the local community perspectives surrounding delisting, our study presents findings and recommendations that emerged from interviews with Michigan PAC members. We found that PACs recognize the need to transition away from projects with a short-term focus and instead prioritize longer-term, holistic strategies that could help catalyze effective public engagement and produce transformative community revitalization. This study’s recommendations for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) include: (1) dedicating more time to post-delisting planning, (2) enhancing communication efforts with PACs, and (3) strengthening long-term public engagement efforts and PAC organizational capacity. These recommendations add to the growing literature supporting the value of local community perspectives and social dimensions of environmental restoration and may also provide transferable insights to communities outside of Michigan that are currently engaged in similar complex, multi-stakeholder environmental restoration projects.     

Changes in the benthic communities of Muskegon Lake,a Great Lakes Area of Concern

Sediment contamination resulting from the direct discharge of industrial and municipal wastes contributed to the designation of Muskegon Lake (Michigan) as a Great Lakes Area of Concern. To assess the changes occurring in the sedient-dwelling invertebrate communities since wastewater diversion began in 1973, benthic samples were collected three times per year (spring, summer, fall) between 2004 and 2010 from six sites and compared to historic samples. The density and diversity of invertebrate populations were analyzed to: 1) identify spatial and temporal patterns in the community structure; 2) determine if community structure patterns were related to environmental variables; and 3) assess the recovery of Muskegon Lake's benthic community following wastewater diversion. Our results revealed that invertebrate community structure changed on both annual and spatial scales, while seasonal differences were shown to be modest between 2004 and 2010. The environmental variables with the greatest explanatory power included dissolved oxygen, pH, and depth. Overall, recovery of benthic invertebrate community structure was evident based on multiple lines of evidence, including increased densities of all major taxonomic groups and species diversity since wastewater diversion, decreases in both the oligochaete–chironomid ratio (0.92 in 1972; 0.69 in 2010) and the proportion of oligochaetes, and declining sediment metal concentration over time. However, comparisons of present-day and historic sampling sites must be viewed with caution because sampling locations and protocols varied among years. Significant changes in benthic invertebrate composition and water quality metrics since 1972 suggest improved environmental conditions and the continued recovery of Muskegon Lake from historic pollution.     

Metrics of ecosystem status for large aquatic systems – A global comparison

We identified an objective set of 25 commonly available ecosystem metrics applicable across the world's large continental freshwater and brackish aquatic ecosystem. These metrics measure trophic structure, exploited species, habitat alteration, and catchment changes. We used long-term trends in these metrics as indicators of perturbations that represent an ecosystem not in homeostasis. We defined a healthy ecosystem as being in a homeostatic state; therefore, ecosystems with many changing trends were defined as more disturbed than ecosystems with fewer changing trends. Healthy ecosystems (lakes Baikal, Superior, and Tanganyika) were large, deep lakes in relatively unpopulated areas with no signs of eutrophication and no changes to their trophic structure. Disturbed ecosystems (lakes Michigan, Ontario, and Victoria) had shallow to moderately deep basins with high watershed population pressure and intense agricultural and residential land use. Transitioning systems had widely varying trends and faced increasing anthropogenic pressures. Standardized methodologies for capturing data could improve our understanding of the current state of these ecosystems and allow for comparisons of the response of large aquatic ecosystems to local and global stressors thereby providing more reliable insights into future changes in ecosystem health.     

Blending science and public policies for remediation of a degraded ecosystem: Jackfish Bay, north shore of Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada

The Jackfish Bay Remedial Action Plan is the first of Lake Superior's Areas of Concern (AOCs) to consider recognition as an Area in Recovery (AiR). As a result of a high degree of complexity and uncertainty, ecosystem recovery in Jackfish Bay has been determined using a combination of regulatory policies and scientific evidence and extensive public and expert-based decision making. As a result, the conceptualization of the AiR status in Jackfish Bay has been developed with the adaptive management and the ecosystem approach, which provide the basic principles of assessing, monitoring, and managing the Area of Concern. To determine the status of beneficial use impairments caused by effluent from the Terrace Bay Pulp Inc., three public advisory committees—an academic panel of experts, a government technical review committee, and the Jackfish Bay Public Area in Recovery Review Committee (PARRC)—reviewed relevant scientific data and documents, including peer-reviewed publications, to assess changes in pollution levels in Jackfish Bay and improvements to aquatic, biotic, and benthic environments of the bay. The public decision-making process concluded with recommendations by the PARRC to develop a systematic monitoring program so that the ecosystem recovery process in the bay could be assessed on a continued basis, leading to its eventual delisting as an AOC. The entire process provides an example of blending science and public policies for remediation of a degraded ecosystem on the Great Lakes.     

Paradigm shifts required to promote ecosystem modeling for ecosystem-based fishery management for African inland lakes

Ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM) is the best option where other fishery management objectives have failed. This makes EBFM important for the African inland lakes and fisheries resources that are among the most threatened in the world despite existing management interventions. Ecosystem modeling provides information that guides EBFM, and, to promote EBFM for the African inland lakes and fisheries, we present strategies required to promote ecosystem modeling. The strategies are based on an examination, presented herein, of (i) publication trends in literature applying two leading aquatic ecosystem modeling platforms, Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) and Atlantis, on the African Great Lakes as representatives of African inland lakes and (ii) deficiencies in data eminent in ecosystem models existing on these lakes. The examination indicated that ecosystem modeling is inactive on the African Great Lakes, and there is limited local and regional capacity for ecosystem modeling with existing models predominantly led by foreign researchers and marred by data deficiencies. The implications of these observations for ecosystem modeling and EBFM for the African Great Lakes are discussed. The strategies required to promote ecosystem modeling include supporting short-term training workshops to equip local scientists with basic skills for ecosystem modeling, mainstreaming ecosystem modeling in fisheries training curriculum of local universities, and conducting data collection surveys to fill data deficiencies. These are envisaged to increase capacity and activate ecosystem modeling, and consequently promote EBFM.     

Current Status and Trends in Muskegon Lake,Michigan

A long-term monitoring program was initiated in 2003 to determine the ecological status of Muskegon Lake, a Great Lakes Area of Concern. This paper presents data generated from the first 3 years of the monitoring program, discusses how the data are being used to establish and justify lake restoration targets, and assesses how water quality conditions have changed over time. Between 1972 and 2005, lake-wide averages of total phosphorus and soluble reactive phosphorus from the water surface have declined from 68 to 27 μg/L and from 20 to 5 μg/L, respectively. In addition, average chlorophyll a concentrations have declined from 25 to 6 μg/L over this period, while Secchi disk depths have increased from 1.5 to 2.2 m. Wastewater diversion, and perhaps dreissenid filtering activity, is most likely responsible for these changes. However, nitrate concentrations have increased from 70 to 270 μg/L over the same time period. During 2003–2005, phytoplankton abundance and fish catch were lower in the spring compared to the summer and fall. Microcystis was the most abundant phytoplankton genus; the fish community generally was dominated by round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) in spring and summer, and sunfishes (Centrarchidae) in the fall. Dreissenid abundance was highly variable over time, but densities were low relative to Saginaw Bay. Approximately 65% of the Muskegon Lake shoreline has been hardened (i.e., physically altered). Overall, the water quality of Muskegon Lake has improved over the past 30 years, but environmental challenges still exist, including contaminated sediments, loss of natural habitat, and invasive species.     

Goals,beneficiaries, and indicators of waterfront revitalization in Great Lakes Areas of Concern and coastal communities

Cleanup of Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOCs) restores environmental benefits to waterfront communities and is an essential condition for revitalization. We define waterfront revitalization as policies or actions in terrestrial waterfront or adjacent aquatic areas that promote improvements in human socioeconomic well-being while protecting or improving the natural capital (the stocks of natural assets, biodiversity) that underlies all environmental, social, and economic benefits. Except for economic measures such as development investments, visitation rates, or commercial activity, evidence of waterfront revitalization in the Great Lakes is mostly anecdotal. We offer a perspective on waterfront revitalization that links indicators and metrics of sustainable revitalization to community goals and human beneficiaries. We compiled environmental, social, economic, and governance indicators and metrics of revitalization, many of which are based on or inspired by Great Lakes AOC case studies and community revitilization or sustainability plans. We highlight the role of indicators in avoiding unintended consequences of revitalization including environmental degradation and social inequity. Revitalization indicators can be used in planning for comparing alternative designs, and to track restoration progress. The relevancy of specific indicators and metrics will always depend on the local context.     

Revisiting the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement phosphorus targets and predicting the trophic status of Lake Michigan

LM3-Eutro is a high-resolution eutrophication model with several improved features lacking in historical Great Lakes models. We calibrated LM3-Eutro using a 2-year (1994-1995) dataset and performed a hindcast simulation from 1976 to 1995 to evaluate the model's ability to make predictions over an extended period of time. Results show a reasonable agreement between model output and field data over this time period. The model predicted that an annual loading of 5600 metric tons (MT) would result in a lake-wide annual total phosphorus (TP) concentration of 7.5 μg L^− 1. Using best estimates of future TP loadings, LM3-Eutro forecasts suggest that Lake Michigan will remain oligotrophic and will continue to meet the 7 μg L^− 1 spring TP concentration Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement objective.     

Re-assessing the degradation of benthos beneficial use impairment in the Toronto and Region Area of Concern

Sediment quality of the Toronto and Region Area of Concern (AOC) waterfront was assessed using a weight of evidence approach following the Sediment Quality Triad, with the addition of contaminant bioaccumulation data, to determine current status following the 2013 re-designation of the “degradation of benthos” Beneficial Use Impairment as “no longer impaired.” Five stations within the AOC were sampled in 2015 and compared to lower Great Lakes nearshore reference areas (n = 22) selected based on similarity of sediment physicochemical properties. Sediment chemistry was comparable except for a localized instance of elevated perfluorinated compounds at one AOC site. Laboratory sediment toxicity bioassays indicated chronic toxicity associated with point sources to the AOC, corresponding to increased invertebrate body burdens measured in laboratory exposures. Diversity metrics and multivariate analysis showed that benthic invertebrate community composition present at the AOC sites was not significantly different from reference conditions of the lower Great Lakes. The weight of evidence from this study indicates benthic invertebrate communities continue to show effects of degraded sediment conditions at sites impacted by point sources. While the 2013 RAP decision was to re-designate the “degradation of benthos” BUI to “no longer impaired,” our results support the notion that life after AOC delisting must continue to prioritize monitoring efforts.     

The 2017 African Great Lakes Conference: Conservation and development in a changing climate

In May 2017, the African Great Lakes community convened for a region-wide conference in Entebbe, Uganda. The African Great Lakes Conference (AGLC) focused on 6 regionally-important themes, and 300+ attendees presented over 100 talks and posters. The AGLC culminated in the adoption of a set of Conference Resolutions designed to direct the future of African Great Lakes conservation and management. As an Introduction to this Journal of Great Lakes Research special section on African Great Lakes, we report on the impetus for the African Great Lakes Conference as well as discuss three major advances and investments that were a direct result of conference resolutions adopted at the meeting. First, we present the AGLC Resolutions, a set of management issues and solutions developed at the conference. Second, we discuss the African Great Lakes Conference Fund, a conservation fund that has awarded $500,000 USD to launch four new initiatives. Finally, we describe African Great Lakes Inform, a knowledge management platform designed to promote collaboration in the region. The AGLC in general, and these three major conference outcomes specifically, provide a set of basic building blocks to advance partnerships, research and capacity in the African Great Lakes region.