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NOAA’s GREAT LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

The words "NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory " superimposed on top of photograph of light house. November 24, 2003 — The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory is one of 12 federal research laboratories within NOAA Research. Established in 1974 in Ann Arbor, Mich., GLERL conducts high-quality research and provides scientific leadership on important issues in both Great Lakes and marine coastal environments leading to new knowledge, tools, approaches, awareness and services. For example, the lab provides coastal constituents and federal, state and international decision- and policy-makers with scientific understanding of the: sources, pathways, fates and effects of toxic contaminants; natural hazards such as severe waves, storm surges, and ice; ecosystems and their interactions, including threat and impact of aquatic invasive species; changes in lake water levels; and regional effects related to global climate change.

In doing so, GLERL science helps protect the life and property, economic well being and sustained ecosystem health of the Great Lakes — which constitute one fifth of the Earth’s surface fresh water supply and 95 percent of U.S. surface quantities.

GLERL History
GLERL Director, Steve Brandt, said that the lab was set up in Ann Arbor nearly 30 yearss ago as a follow-up action after the 1972-73 U.S. Canada International Field Year for the Great Lakes. Brandt explained that IFYGL was marked by an unprecedented level of trans-border scientific cooperation by agencies in the two countries in examining Lake Ontario’s ecosystem. Today, given renewed concerns about new threats to Lake Erie’s health, Brandt said that U.S. and Canadian scientists were considering another joint, multi-year IFYGL-like study to shed new light on changes in ecological structure and function of the Lake Erie ecosystem and development of strategies to restore and preserve its environmental integrity.

GLERL Facilities
GLERL’s 14-year old main facility located in Ann Arbor, Mich. occupies 25,500 sq. ft. of space. Approximately 6,620 square feet are devoted to laboratory space that includes 30 wet and dry laboratories, a Computer Facility, a Marine Instrumentation Laboratory, a Remote Sensing Laboratory, a Geographic Information System Laboratory and a Fish Acoustics Laboratory. Offices occupy more than 10,000 square feet, with the remaining space being occupied by GLERL’s research library, a lecture hall, conference rooms and storage. In 1990, GLERL assumed ownership of the former Coast Guard base at Muskegon, Mich., on the south side of the channel between Muskegon Lake and Lake Michigan. The site includes three buildings and research vessel dockage next to the main building. During 1993, one of the three buildings was renovated to include scientific laboratories, offices and storage, and in 1994 a lead scientist and ship operations were permanently relocated to the site, which was officially named the Lake Michigan Field Station. Presently, four full-time scientists, three full-time ship crew and a marine superintendent reside at the LMFS. The other buildings provide space for small vessel storage and repair, additional space for scientific activities, a meeting room, the Vessel Operations Office and equipment storage. The functions of the field station include providing a base of operations for GLERL’s research vessels and to provide a focal point for field research on Lake Michigan for GLERL scientists and partners.

GLERL Activities
GLERL uses both traditional disciplinary approaches to investigate scientific environmental problems, as well as integrated and multidisciplinary approaches to investigate the complex links between different components of aquatic ecosystems. GLERL performs field, analytical, laboratory and modeling investigations to improve understanding and prediction of coastal and estuarine processes. It places special emphasis on a systems approach to problem-oriented and solution-focused research to develop environmental service tools. GLERL uses six basic types of activities to achieve its goals. The activities cover a broad spectrum and include investigating basic processes, applying research results and providing products and services:

Research: GLERL conducts research that is both proactive and reactive. Proactive, or fundamental research, improves a basic understanding of how aquatic environments work. One of the intentions of such research is to recognize the significance of an emerging issue and be prepared to address the issue if problematic. Reactive or problem-solving research is conducted in response to recognized problems deemed highly relevant to society.
Long-Term Monitoring: GLERL’s monitoring programs use multidisciplinary resources to assess status and trends in aquatic environments. Long-term monitoring permits identification of perturbations that may signal changes in the ecosystem, puts current trends into an historical framework and provides a context to assess the impact of predicted changes. These programs are long-term, involve partners and employ the latest technologies.
Technology Development: GLERL develops new tools, models and approaches required for assessing environmental conditions and for scientific advancement.
Information Synthesis and Assessment: GLERL compiles and interprets information and data to assess the state of scientific knowledge on relevant issues and makes them available to those who need it.
Multi-Institutional Program Development: GLERL leads, coordinates and develops multi-institutional scientific programs with public, private, state, federal and international partners for the expansion and transfer of environmental knowledge and technology.
Communication and Education: GLERL’s programs deliver information, assessments and expert council to the scientific, regulatory, educational and general public communities. GLERL activities produce a number of products and services that are made available to the agencies, industries, scientific communities and public interested in and responsible for Great Lakes and coastal marine issues.

From an Ecosystem Focus to an Ecological Forecasting Capability
Since its inception, GLERL has been staffed and managed with a wide array of scientific disciplines and expertise on hand, enabling it to take a unique ecosystem research focus. This multidisciplinary approach has produced valuable insight on underlying, physical, chemical and biological processes in the Lakes and how they work in concert to affect ecosystem dynamics. In the future, Brandt said that the challenge would be to build on such valuable knowledge and expertise and use ongoing lab, field and modeling research to build new process-level ecological models and novel forecasting tools. “While GLERL has been highly successful at studying and explaining Great Lakes and coastal ecosystem dynamics, we feel that it’s now time to take a bold step forward and develop the capability to predict where such ecosystems might be headed in the immediate and long term.” Such outlooks, Brandt explained, would give resource managers and policymakers an early warning on emerging changes and threats and allow them to take pre-emptive measures to protect ecosystem integrity.

GLERL Research Themes
GLERL houses a unique combination of scientific expertise in biogeochemical, hydrological, ecological, physical limnology and oceanographic sciences. With GLERL’s new focus on Ecological Forecasting, its current research will soon be reorganized into the following four research themes:

Physical Environment Prediction
- Great Lakes Ice Thickness Data Rescue
- Great Lakes Ice Cycle
- Improved Great Lakes Ice Cover Climatology
- Climatology of the Physical Environment in Lake Erie Project
- Recent Lake Levels and Precipitation in Historical Perspective
- Dynamical Modeling of Great Lakes Regional Climate
- Climate and Land Use Change Processes in East Africa
- Overlake Wind Events on Lake Erie
- Sampling the Resuspendable Pool of Sediments and Associated Contaminants and Measuring Mass and Contaminant Fluxes in Lake Michigan Using Sediment Traps
- Bioavailability of Sediment-Associated Toxic Organic Contaminants
- Environmental Radiotracers
- Lake Circulation Studies and the Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System
- Climatology of the Physical Environment in Lake Erie Project
- New Bathymetry of the Great Lakes
- Real-time Meteorological Observation Network
- Time-frequency Study of Near Shore Wind and Wave Processes
- Rogue Waves and Explorations of Coastal Wave Characteristics
- Sediment Resuspension and Transport in Lake Michigan
- Physical Processes in Lake Champlain
- Measurement and Modeling of Wave-induced Sediment Resuspension in Near Shore Water
- Origin and Maintenance of the Benthic Nepheloid Layer
- Water Resources Management Decision Support
- Next Generation Large Basin Runoff Model
- Episodic Events: Great Lakes Experiment
Ecological Prediction
- Contaminant Effects: Investigations on the Utility of Body Residue as the Dose Metric.
- Modeling the Influence of Lake Circulation Patterns, Upwelling Events, and Turbulence on Fish Recruitment Variability in Lake Michigan
- Episodic Events: Great Lakes Experiment
- Changes in the Pelagic Food Web of Southern Lake Michigan: A Food Web under Stress from Non-Indigenous Species?
- Pelagic-Benthic Coupling in Southern Lake Michigan
- Effects of Diporeia declines on fish diet, growth and food web dynamics in southeast Lake Michigan
- Mechanisms Affecting Recruitment of Yellow Perch in Lake Michigan
- Dynamics of Alewife Recruitment Variability in Lake Michigan
- Natural Recruitment of Salmonids in the Muskegon River, Michigan
- Defining the Ecological Footprint of the Muskegon River Watershed on Fisheries in Near Shore Lake Michigan
- Assessments of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities in the Great Lakes
- An Evaluation of Bioenergetic Modeling for Lake Whitefish in Lake Michigan
- Ecology of Lake Whitefish and Response to Changes in Lake Huron Benthic Communities
- Study group on fisheries Acoustics in the Great Lakes
- Ecosystem Variability and Estuarine Fisheries: A Synthesis
- Habitat-Mediated Predator-Prey Interactions in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico
- Florida ECOHAB
- Census of Marine Life in Chesapeake Bay
- Regional Collaboration in Environmental Monitoring and Forecasting in the Northern Adriatic Sea
- Toward the Census of Marine Life: Proof of Concept Through the Integration of Traditional, Optical and Acoustic Zooplankton and Fish Data in the Chesapeake Bay
- Developing guidance for monitoring coastal freshwater habitat restoration projects
- Long-Term Trends in Benthic Populations
Aquatic Invasive Species
- Invertebrate Resting Eggs As Secondary Aquatic Invasion Vectors
- Computational Modeling of Ballast Tanks to Improve Understanding and Maximize Effectiveness of Management Practices
- Great Lakes Aquatic Invasive Species Database Project
- Development and Testing of Instrumented Incubator-Emergence Traps
- The Role of Zebra Mussels in Promoting Microcystis Blooms and Other Ecosystem Changes in Saginaw Bay and Lake Erie
- Changes in the Pelagic Food Web of Southern Lake Michigan: A Food Web under Stress from Non-Indigenous Species?
- Assessing Ecological Risks Posed by a Ballast Water Disinfectant
- Impact of Exotic Invertebrate Invaders on Food Web Structure and Function in the Great Lakes: a Network Analysis Approach
- Assessment of NOBOB Vessels and Low-Salinity Ballast Water as Vectors for Non-indigenous Species Introductions to the Great Lakes
- Development of a Virtual Ecosystem of Populations of Digital Organisms to Examine Problems Concerning Invasive Species
- Implications of Cercopagis and Bythotrephes to Alewife Recruitment and Stability of the Lake Michigan Pelagic Food Web
Great Lakes Observing System
- Integrated Coastal Observing System for the Great Lakes
- Great Lakes CoastWatch and NOAA Ocean Communications Network
- Great Lakes CoastWatch Research and Product Development
- Thermal Structure Monitoring and Related Studies

The two most notable programs are the National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species and the Great Lakes Observing System:

National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species
Aquatic Invasive species are a global threat affecting economic security, management and beneficial uses of our coastal ecosystems. To maximize the benefits of NOAA’s research investments in understanding, preventing, responding to and managing aquatic species invasions in U.S. coastal ecosystems, NOAA established the NOAA National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species at GLERL in July 2003. The Center’s broad goal is to foster, coordinate and support aquatic invasive species research throughout and across NOAA, enhancing its ability to accomplish its mission and strategic goals and carry out mandated responsibilities on AIS issues.

Great Lakes Observing System – Toward a Basin-wide Real Time Capability
As GLERL moves toward development of new ecological forecast tools it is also working to develop a basin-wide Great Lakes Observing System featuring real-time, Internet-accessible data on Great Lakes physics, chemistry and biology. This system will be integrated with existing CoastWatch and monitoring and assessment programs. Brandt explained that such expanded databases would enable GLERL scientists to develop and test more detailed ecological forecast models, leading to more accurate and reliable prediction.

What’s Ahead?
Brandt said that as GLERL approaches its 30th anniversary in 2004, it would face many exciting challenges, but that the lab would not be alone and would continue to rely on a diverse and rich collection of partnerships to reach goals. For example, in 2001, GLERL, working with the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network and Sea Grant’s National Program successfully established a GLERL-based Sea Grant Extension Agent position with the role of strengthening communication and coordination between GLERL and the seven Great Lakes Sea Grant programs. Through this new partnership, GLERL scientific products, services and expertise are now becoming more available to — constituents via Sea Grant’s extensive outreach infrastructure. At the same time, Sea Grant Extension Agents based in communities across the Great Lakes region, have provided GLERL with valuable input on constituent needs, allowing the lab to plan and adjust its research to meet such needs. Brandt noted that the August 2003 Ecological Forecasting Workshop organized by Sea Grant — had provided useful feedback from constituents on what sort of forecast information would be most valuable. “As we embark on our effort to develop new forecast tools, we need to make sure that these resources will be sought out and readily used by our constituents. That means that we need to be fully tuned in to their needs at start-up of the development process,” he said.