This award will support a workshop to assess scientific research needs to address major biogeochemical changes that have been taken place over the past five decades in the Laurentide Great Lakes, an ecosystem particularly susceptible to disruption by non-native species. The workshop will be held at Wayne State University in Detroit on March 11-13, 2013. It will be the first of its kind to assess the biogeochemical changes that have arisen since the introduction of invasive species such as zebra mussels which arrived in mid-1980s. Despite a long history of nearly 200 non-native invaders, the rapid, extensive colonization and reengineering of the lower Great Lakes by dreissenid mussels in the last 20-30 years has fundamentally altered the cycling of biogeochemically important materials (BIMs) and resulted arguably in the largest biogeochemical shift in the Lakes in recent history. The purpose of this workshop is to document these changes and the fundamental scientific questions associated with them in the form of a Science Plan, which will be widely disseminated. A summary of the workshop will be synthesized and published in EOS.
Intellectual Merit: This is the first basin-wide assessment of the changing biogeochemistry of the Great Lakes freshwater system. The identification of the processes that have caused and are causing these changes will be of broad interest to the global aquatic geochemical community. The participation and sponsorship by eight universities that are actively involved with freshwater research in partnership with at least three federal agencies is a testament to the need and timeliness of the workshop.
Broader Impact: Approximately 37 million people live in the Great Lakes basin and 26 million people rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water. The water quality has direct impact not only on human health but also on jobs in agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, shipping, and tourism. The outcome of the workshop is relevant to the science and management of large freshwater lakes around the world, such as the East African rift lakes, Lake Baikal, Lake Tanganyika, and the Canadian interior great lakes (Great Bear, Great Slave, Winnipeg, and Athabasca). The deliberations of the workshop will be beneficial to the participating graduate students and the meeting may provide a platform for linking graduate education across the Midwest.
Food webs and associated key nutrient elemental cycles in the Laurentian Great Lakes have been considerably altered over the past 30 years due to factors such as phosphorus abatement, introduction of zebra and quagga mussels, and climate change. Despite a long history of nearly 200 non-native invaders, the rapid, extensive colonization and reengineering of the lower Great Lakes by dreissenid mussels in the last 20-30 years has fundamentally altered the ecosystem and resulted arguably in the largest biogeochemical shift in the lakes in recent history. These perturbations provide a unique opportunity to document how this natural system has responded and possibly to predict future changes in the biogeochemical cycling. Approximately 37 million people live in the Great Lakes basin with 26 million people relying on the Great Lakes for their drinking water. The water quality has direct impact not only on human health but also on jobs in agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, shipping, and tourism. In order to assess the scientific research needs for process-oriented research on the biogeochemical changes caused by the directly or indirectly human-induced perturbations, a three-day (March 11-13, 2013) workshop was held at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Sixty scientists mostly from across the Great Lakes states representing 17 universities, five federal agencies, among others, with expertise spanning a spectrum of research areas including nutrients and carbon cycling, key trace elements and isotopes as biogeochemical tracers, geo- and radiochemistry, ecology, hydrogeology, physical oceanography, modeling, remote sensing, and climate change, gathered and discussed the state of the Great Lakes system. The workshop highlighted gaps in scientists’ understanding of primary/secondary production and respiration, and cycling and mass balance of nutrient elements (nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, organic carbon) and key micronutrients (iron (Fe), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and cadmium (Cd)). Some of these data are available only for select monitoring sites, mostly collected during summer months. Participants pointed out that continuous accumulation of some nutrients (e.g., nitrate (NO3-) in Lake Superior), major removal of phosphate (PO4-3; e.g., Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Erie) and increasing Si (e.g., Lakes Michigan and Huron) have resulted in the distortion of the stoichiometric ratios of nutrients (e.g., NO3-/ PO4-3); factors and internal processes that drive these changes in these lakes are not fully understood. The workshop created strong relationships among researchers with different research interests and established networks for future collaboration to address some of the foundational science questions (e.g., why there are temporal variations of stoichiometric nutrient ratios, if this observation is common to all lakes, and how these changing ratios affect ecosytems). Workshop presentation abstracts and Final Report of the workshop are available online at http://bogls.science.wayne.edu/).
