What’s in Store for the IJC’s Great Lakes Advisory Boards in 2026

Members of the International Joint Commission’s Great Lakes advisory boards continue to work on projects that help the IJC provide Canadian and US governments with advice to ensure safe and healthy water quality.  

Great Lakes Water Quality Board

In late 2025, the IJC’s Great Lakes Water Quality Board published its Great Lakes Climate Adaptation Resource Guide, to help small and medium-sized communities with climate adaptation planning. The guide was designed to help these communities identify resources and tools to support the development of climate adaptation and resilience strategies applicable to Great Lakes water topics.   

Work continues on the board’s exploration of the social dimensions of environmental restoration. In partnership with the Detroit-Windsor United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise, the board hosted a workshop last November to identify common themes and transferrable lessons for strengthening cross-border collaboration on issues facing shared waterways. The workshop brought together leaders, researchers and students from the University of Windsor and Wayne State University to address restoration, sustainability and resilience in the Detroit River watershed. 

The board met in-person in April in Washington, DC, and in October in Windsor, Ontario. In an engagement at the Ojibwe Nature Park, members of the Walpole Island First Nation shared a ceremony with the board, and Caldwell First Nation Chief van Oirschot welcomed the board, followed by presentations and a discussion with local experts from the University of Windsor Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, City of Windsor, and Essex Region Conservation Authority. 

Great Lakes Science Advisory Board

The Great Lakes Science Advisory Board continues working on the forthcoming Great Lakes Science Plan. The Science Plan aims to address gaps and needs in Great Lakes science knowledge and research infrastructure to help prepare the region for future threats and stressors. In 2025, the board completed a series of six workshops to inform the Science Plan’s content. Development of a final draft version of the plan is currently underway.  

The board’s efforts to develop standardized guidelines for participatory science to improve Great Lakes science is also ongoing. The guide aims to inform data collection methods for volunteers and organizations so that communities see the benefits of their efforts reflected in management actions, and end users, such as agency and academic researchers, policy makers, nongovernmental organizations and others, can use participatory science data with confidence. 

The science advisory board continues to make progress on a project for a pilot study toward the development of a Great Lakes Early Warning System. The board is currently piloting how such a system would work, using case studies such as antimicrobial resistance and aqueous nitrogen.

Health Professionals Advisory Board 

The Health Professionals Advisory Board’s Great Lakes Microbial Water Quality Assessment project continues since getting underway in 2020. The project aims to guide the use of new and innovative technologies to enhance approaches to monitoring and assessing threats to water quality. In 2025, the project reached its second phase, which includes efforts for an inter-lab validation study and pilot study. 

Departing Staff from the Great Lakes Regional Office

Long time Great Lakes Regional Office staff member Mark Burrows celebrated his retirement after 25 years of service to the IJC. During his career, Mark provided leadership on ballast water management issues, aquatic invasive species and with the Great Lakes Association of Science Ships. Mark served as the Secretary to the Great Lakes Water Quality Board and the Council of Great Lakes Research Managers (now the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board Research Coordination Committee), as well as the acting director of the Great Lakes Regional Office on multiple occasions.

The IJC’s expert advisory boards assist the Commission to fulfill its obligations under the Canada-US Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty. This includes assisting in the development of the IJC’s forthcoming Fourth Triennial Assessment of Progress report.