Lake Erie Collaborative Science and Monitoring Initiative 2014

In 2014, the USGS Lake Erie Biological Station participated in the Coordinated Science and Monitoring Initiative (CMSI) program, a program founded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Environment Canada in the 1990s as a means to focus collaborative research attention on one of the five Great Lakes each year (on a rotating schedule) as a means to increase scientific knowledge for Great Lakes restoration. The Lake Erie survey examined the food web across a nearshore to offshore gradient, matching the sampling design the preceding USGS studies of the other four Great Lakes (2010-2013). We sampled all trophic levels in all three lake basins across multiple seasons in order to determine nutrient availability and trophic energy transfers from nearshore to offshore across the lake’s west-east production gradient. In each basin two transects, each consisting of replicate nearshore, mid, and offshore sites were sampled. The lower trophic food web (water nutrients, zooplankton, and benthos) was sampled monthly, and the fish community (via bottom trawl and hydroacoutics) was sampled bi-monthly (May, July, and September). By examining the trophic interactions and energy transfer in all three basins, this data may be of interest to anyone interested in examining some of Lake Erie’s principal environmental and ecological issues such as sedimentation and nutrient loading (western basin), seasonal hypoxia (central basin), and strong nearshore to offshore production gradients (eastern basin).