The Great Lakes Center of Buffalo State College will receive funds from the ARI Program to renovate the laboratory water supply and water treatment facility for the Aquatic Research Laboratory (ARL). The ARL is the only modern facility located on the lower Great Lakes capable of supporting experimental aquatic research with lake water. Experimental work at the ARL has suffered from an inability to maintain water temperature and water quality at levels required for bioenergetics, behavioral and physiological experiments. At present, the water system mixes all waste waters into a single septic tank system that does not meet OSHA standards. This award will support the renovations of experimental facilities to provided filtered lake water with computer-directed temperature control. Thus enabling faculty and students to conduct experiments that will provide detailed species-specific data required for studies of freshwater ecosystems. Improvements will provide facilities needed for experiments measuring fish and plankton physiological responses to changes in environmental conditions that occur naturally or result from anthropogenic effects on the ecosystems. Experiments conducted with these renovated facilities will be coupled with the Laboratory's existing modeling program in fish bioenergetics, spatial modeling of habitat quality, 3-D foraging models and individual-based models of fish populations. The Great Lakes Center has established the only Graduate Program in Great Lakes Environmental Sciences in the country. This project will not only benefit research training for students, but for visiting scientists from other institutions and abroad who come to learn techniques integrating field sampling and spatial modeling programs.
