Summary of Lake Simcoe’s past, present and future

Abstract

This special section of Inland Waters contains the final installment of a collection of papers on Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada. Collectively, the 4 papers in Volume 3, Issue 1 and the 13 papers in the current issue demonstrate the integrative and collaborative monitoring and research efforts underway to protect this large, multi-stressed lake. In the first preface to the special sections (Palmer et al. 2013), we detailed legislative and financial initiatives that have been implemented by the federal and provincial governments to support science in the Lake Simcoe watershed. Here, we summarize the resultant science reported in these special sections and highlight priority areas for future work.