Monitoring of Lake Ontario coastal wetland habitat in support of adaptive management - 2016

This project will result in detailed vegetation community aerial coverage and taxonomic data referenced to elevation and seasonal water levels in 8 Lake Ontario coastal wetlands. These data can be used for adaptive management monitoring and integrate into wetland vegetation community modelling in Lake Ontario prior to regulation changes. For example, the data will support the validation of the wetland component of the Integrated Ecological Response Model(IERM) used to evaluate Lake Ontario regulation plans.

In the summer of 2015, eight coastal wetlands were surveyed to provide wetland vegetation data referenced to water levels to support the modelling of aquatic ecosystem impacts from potential changes in water level regulation. The data from these surveys will be synthesized with field wetland data from 2009-2014 in a manner appropriate for comparing to the wetlands algorithm used in the IERM from the Lake Ontario- St. Lawrence River Study.