A Great Help for the Great Lakes

Communities, elected officials and government agencies concerned about protection and management of the world's largest freshwater lake system are about to receive a very cool new tool to support their efforts.

Supporters and stewards of the Great Lakes on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border have their eyes trained on a University of Michigan team that has announced plans to produce the first comprehensive, basin-wide map of threats to the lakes' well-being.

The project is planned to begin through a series of regional fact-finding and data-gathering workshops to collect existing information from the various nooks and crannies of activity taking place throughout the Great Lakes watershed. The UM team will then review the amassed information and assign weights to the various data to reflect the threat each and all pose to the lake system.

Ultimately, the compilation of weighted threats into a single, basin-wide map document will result in a comprehensive analytical tool that will provide support and guidance for those working on behalf of the entire Great Lakes system as well as those whose focus is more regional.

In a university press release, aquatic sciences professor and project lead David Allan dives in head-first in explaining the significance of his team's efforts:

"Building on previous efforts to map each threat and priority individually, for the first time we now have the ability to generate synthetic maps of threats and their predicted impacts for the entire Great Lakes basin. Though challenging, this effort is requisite to achieving a full understanding of the current and future state of the lakes, and will be particularly valuable in the current era of rapidly expanding human impacts, including anthropogenic climate change."

Photo courtesy of NASA, via Wikimedia Commons