Development of the Water Quality Index (WQI) to assess effects of basin-wide land-use alteration on coastal marshes of the Laurentian Great Lakes
Water-quality impairment for many coastal wetlands of the lower Great Lakes has been attributed to nutrient and sediment inputs from agricultural and urban landscapes, although for some marshes, point-source pollution from municipal or industrial waste- treatment facilities and… Read More
Geophysical and sedimentological assessment of urban impacts in a Lake Ontario watershed and lagoon: Frenchman’s Bay, Pickering, Ontario
Managing the environmental impacts of urbanization on watersheds is a major problem facing Canadian communities. Meeting this challenge requires that municipal planning departments have access to good quality environmental information allowing them to develop effective land use… Read More
Change in biomass of benthic and planktonic algae along a disturbance gradient for 24 Great Lakes coastal wetlands
We quantified the chlorophyll a content of planktonic algae and benthic algae in periphyton on acrylic rods and in epiphyton growing on macrophytes in 24 coastal wetlands in all five Laurentian Great Lakes. Sites were selected to represent a wide range of environmental conditions… Read More
Development and use of a zooplankton index to monitor wetland quality in the Laurentian Great Lakes basin
Recent interest in biological monitoring as an ecosystem assessment tool has stimulated the development of a number of biotic indices designed to aid in the evaluation of ecosystem integrity; however, zooplankton have rarely been included in biomonitoring schemes. We developed a… Read More
Spatial variability in the response of lower trophic levels after carp exclusion from a freshwater marsh
Large common carp (Cyprinus carpio >30 cm) were excluded from a turbid, eutrophic coastal marsh of Lake Ontario with the construction of a fishway at the outlet. The marsh was sampled intensively for 2 seasons prior to (1993, 1994) and following (1997, 1998) carp exclusion to… Read More