Abstract
BackgroundEcosystem management requires organizing, synthesizing, and projecting information at a large scale while simultaneously addressing public interests, dynamic ecological properties, and a continuum of physicochemical conditions. We compared the impacts of seven water level management plans for Lake Ontario on a set of environmental attributes of public relevance.Methodology and FindingsOur assessment method was developed with a set of established impact assessment tools (checklists, classifications, matrices, simulations, representative taxa, and performance relations) and the concept of archetypal geomorphic shoreline classes. We considered each environmental attribute and shoreline class in its typical and essential form and predicted how water level change would interact with defining properties. The analysis indicated that about half the shoreline of Lake Ontario is potentially sensitive to water level change with a small portion being highly sensitive. The current water management plan may be best for maintaining the environmental resources. In contrast, a natural water regime plan designed for greatest environmental benefits most often had adverse impacts, impacted most shoreline classes, and the largest portion of the lake coast. Plans that balanced multiple objectives and avoided hydrologic extremes were found to be similar relative to the environment, low on adverse impacts, and had many minor impacts across many shoreline classes.SignificanceThe Lake Ontario ecosystem assessment provided information that can inform decisions about water management and the environment. No approach and set of methods will perfectly and unarguably accomplish integrated ecosystem assessment. For managing water levels in Lake Ontario, we found that there are no uniformly good and bad options for environmental conservation. The scientific challenge was selecting a set of tools and practices to present broad, relevant, unbiased, and accessible information to guide decision-making on a set of management options.
Highlights
Ecosystem-scale management is increasingly being initiated around the world to cope with complex problems spanning diverse environmental attributes over large areas
Expected impacts were concentrated in two shoreline classes that have extensive shallow water and low sloping shores with limited physical response to water level change: baymouth-barrier beach and protected wetland classes
These two shoreline classes were similar in anticipated impacts with some environmental attributes covered in one shoreline class
Summary
Ecosystem-scale management is increasingly being initiated around the world to cope with complex problems spanning diverse environmental attributes over large areas. Some notable US examples of ecosystem management are the landscape habitat modeling used for restoration of the Florida’s Everglades [1,2]; the indicator set used to track Chesapeake Bay management progress [3]; a key environmental tradeoffs comparison among scenarios for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California [4]; and long-term empirical monitoring of the Mississippi River [5]. In these and others cases, managed changes are expected to have numerous and widespread effects across many attributes of an ecosystem. We compared the impacts of seven water level management plans for Lake Ontario on a set of environmental attributes of public relevance
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