Leveraging a Landscape-Level Monitoring and Assessment Program for Developing Resilient Shorelines throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes

Donald G Uzarski ,T Kevin O’Donnell,Thomas M Gehring,Robert W Howe,Matthew Cooper ,Nicholas P Danz,Douglas C Tozer,Greg P Grabas,Joseph P Gathman,Alan D Steinman,Anne Garwood,Lucinda B Johnson,Dennis A Albert,Valerie Brady ,Gary A Lamberti,Jan J H Ciborowski,Douglas A Wilcox,Gerald J Niemi,Todd Redder,Carl R Ruetz ,Ashley H Moerke

doi:10.1007/s13157-019-01139-w

Abstract

Traditionally, ecosystem monitoring, conservation, and restoration have been conducted in a piecemeal manner at the local scale without regional landscape context. However, scientifically driven conservation and restoration decisions benefit greatly when they are based on regionally determined benchmarks and goals. Unfortunately, required data sets rarely exist for regionally important ecosystems. Because of early recognition of the extreme ecological importance of Laurentian Great Lakes coastal wetlands, and the extensive degradation that had already occurred, significant investments in coastal wetland research, protection, and restoration have been made in recent decades and continue today. Continued and refined assessment of wetland condition and trends, and the evaluation of restoration practices are all essential to ensuring the success of these investments. To provide wetland managers and decision makers throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes basin with the optimal tools and data needed to make scientifically-based decisions, our regional team of Great Lakes wetland scientists developed standardized methods and indicators used for assessing wetland condition. From a landscape perspective, at the Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystem scale, we established a stratified random-site-selection process to monitor birds, anurans, fish, macroinvertebrates, vegetation, and physicochemical conditions of coastal wetlands in the US and Canada. Monitoring of approximately 200 wetlands per year began in 2011 as the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program. In this paper, we describe the development, delivery, and expected results of this ongoing international, multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder, landscape-scale monitoring program as a case example of successful application of landscape conservation design.

Highlights

Coastal wetlands are critical components of the Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystem and have suffered extensive degradation and loss over the past two centuries (Snell 1987; Krieger et al 1992; Schaefer 1994, Environment Canada 2002), and most have been greatly affected by land-use change and pollution (Bedford 1992; Wilcox 1995)
Over half of all Great Lakes coastal wetlands have been destroyed by human activities, and many remaining coastal wetlands suffer from anthropogenic stressors such as nutrient and sediment loading, fragmentation, invasive species, shoreline alteration, and water-level control (Burton 1985; Krieger et al 1992; SOLEC 2007; Wilcox et al 2008), as documented by a bi-national Great Lakes-wide mapping and attribution project (Albert and Simonson 2004; Ingram and Potter 2004)
We developed an infrastructure for a long-term, statistically-sound monitoring framework, including the establishment of rotating panels of wetlands using a probabilistic selection process

Summary

Present address

Ste. Marie, MI, USA LimnoTech Corporate HQ, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University, Muskegon, MI, USA Long Point Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Program, Bird Studies. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes National

Introduction

Sampling Methodology