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Monitoring Land Cover Change in the Lake Superior Basin
Citation:
HOLLENHORST, T., L. B. JOHNSON, AND J. CIBOROWSKI. Monitoring Land Cover Change in the Lake Superior Basin. Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management. Taylor & Francis, Inc., Philadelphia, PA, 14(4):433-442, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
To document research results.
Description:
Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by area and the third largest by volume. It is also the most pristine of the Great Lakes (Lake Superior Lakewide Management Plan 2006). Even still, Lake Superior is not without its threats ranging from chemical contaminants, shoreline alteration and development, to atmospheric deposition and climate change. These threats and stresses, whether they are acute or chronic, vary from local to continental and even global scales, and even in these relatively pristine systems, have the potential to push ecosystems and communities to alternative stable states (i.e., monotypic stands of invasive phragmites, or wholesale changes in fish communities) (Peckam et al. 2006). At the same time, because of its large size, Lake Superior and its surrounding watershed is a difficult system to monitor. This is compounded by the basin’s relatively low population and lack of academic and government institutions available to undertake baseline and monitoring efforts necessary to fully understand and quantify the health and condition of the world’s largest freshwater basin.