When a project to remove contaminated sediment from Michigan’s Rouge River gets underway, it will pull nearly a century of pollution with it, bringing a longstanding effort to rehabilitate and clean up the waterway one major step closer to its goal.
Habitat
Human development has fragmented natural environments across the Great Lakes basin, causing problems for species that rely on those habitats to survive. These problems may be exacerbated by a changing climate. This hasn’t snuck up on the people and organizations working on restoring habitat and…
A study of lake trout stocked into Lake Michigan has found a wild population rising in the southern basin of the lake, but struggling in the north where sea lamprey predation and fishing pressure prevents most fish from living long enough to spawn.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 2012 binds Canada and the United States to restoring and safeguarding the Great Lakes.
In its First Triennial Assessment of Progress under the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Agreement), the International Joint Commission (IJC) calls on Canada and the United States to set specific timelines and targets for making critical improvements to wastewater and drinking water…
A virulent, hardy, and aggressive aquatic invasive plant has been working its way north, approaching the Great Lakes in a few spots. The plant, called hydrilla, is the target of a binational effort to understand its spread and how it can be dealt with before it gets established.
The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has counted infrastructure maintenance as one of its duties for decades, and in recent years looked for ways to use maintenance and repair projects to improve habitat for species in the Great Lakes basin.
2017 has been another intense year for wildfires in the western US and Canada, placing water infrastructure in the crosshairs.
Even though only one new invasive species (a zooplankton in Lake Erie) has become established in the Great Lakes since 2006, the Asian carp found nine miles from Lake Michigan in June showed that the threat of new invaders is still very real.
Eurasian tench, an invasive species found in Canada and the United States, has been rapidly expanding its range into the St. Lawrence River in recent years.