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This State of the Great Lakes (2001)
report is the fourth biennial report issued by the
governments of Canada and the United States of
America (the Parties to the Great Lakes Water
Quality Agreement), pursuant to reporting
requirements of the Agreement. Previous reports
presented information on the state of the Lakes
based on ad hoc indicators suggested by scientific
experts involved in the State of the Lakes Ecosystem
Conferences (SOLEC). In
1996, those involved in SOLEC saw the need to
develop a comprehensive, basin-wide set of
indicators that would allow the Parties to report on
progress under the Agreement in a comparable and
standard format.
Indicators will tell us whether we
are meeting the goals of the Great Lakes Water
Quality Agreement (“...to restore and maintain the
chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the
waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem”), and
provide us with answers to ‘simpler’ questions such
as: Can we drink the water?; Can we eat the fish?;
and Can we swim in the water? Indicators help us to
measure our progress towards reaching our goals, or,
alternatively, how far we have left to go.
This report represents the first in
the indicator-based format, giving information on 33
of the 80 indicators being proposed by the Parties.
These 33 indicators were selected because data for
them were readily available with the individual
indicator reports prepared by subject experts.
Not all of the proposed 80
indicators are presently being monitored. This
situation represents a challenge to the Parties to
ensure that information is available in a timely
fashion to allow reporting on progress on all
indicators, at a frequency suitable for each
indicator. It is essential that monitoring systems
be put in place to ensure collection of all
essential
information applicable to each indicator.
A full description of the indicators
is in the
Selection of Indicators for Great Lakes Basin
Ecosystem Health, Version 4.
The Parties cannot provide a
detailed quantitative assessment of all aspects of
the State of the Lakes based on 33 of 80 indicators.
Nevertheless, the Parties make the following overall
qualitative assessment:
The status of the chemical,
physical, and biological
integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes basin
ecosystem has been assessed and is considered mixed
because:
• Surface waters are still amongst the best
sources
of drinking water in the world;
• Progress has been made both in cleaning up
contaminants and in rehabilitating some fish
and wildlife species;
• Invasive species continue as a significant
threat
to Great Lakes biological communities;
• Atmospheric deposition of contaminants
from
distant sources outside the basin confound
efforts to eliminate these substances;
• Urban sprawl threatens high quality
natural
areas, rare species, farmland and open
space;
and
• Development, drainage, and pollution are
shrinking coastal wetlands.
The assessments for each of the 33
indicators are on
the following page. The section that follows
the
Executive Summary contains implications for
managers. This section was prepared in order
to
meet one of the SOLEC objectives: “...to
strengthen
the decision-making and environmental
management concerning the Great Lakes.”
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