Introduction to the Northwest Ontario Lake Size Series (NOLSS)

Abstract

The rationale, design, and limitations of the Northwest Ontario Lake Size Series (NOLSS) research program are described. The primary purpose of NOLSS is to discover how lake size per se influences limnological and fisheries phenomena, so that conclusions drawn from studies of particular lakes can be rigorously scaled and applied to lakes of other sizes. NOLSS consists of six lakes located in a remote wilderness region of Northwest Ontario. These lakes were chosen for their geological, hydrological, and morphological similarity (Canadian Shield geology; water renewal time> 5 yr; fully stratified in summer), but they form an exponential gradient in surface area (from 89 to 34 700 ha.) Associated with this gradient of lake size are gradients of physical properties (turbulent energy, mixing depth, thermal behaviour) to which biological communities must adapt. NOLSS fills the conspicuous gap in size that separates two well-studied groups of lakes in Northwest Ontario: the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), where whole-lake manipulation experiments are performed, and the Laurentian Great Lakes (Nipigon, Superior), where these experiments find some of their most important applications.