Lake Erie: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Lake Erie is the southernmost, shallowest, warmest, most nutrient enriched, and biologically the most productive of the Great Lakes. The degradation of the Lake's water quality and the burning of the Cuyahoga River in the 1960s and 1970s made it the poster child for pollution problems in the world and paved the way for the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the formation of USEPA, NOAA, and Environment and Climate Change Canada, the first Earth Day, and the passage of the Clean Water Act. A long history of overfishing led to the creation of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and its highly successful interagency quota management system. The lake's extreme productivity and poor management allowed the zebra mussel and many other aquatic invasive species to enter and thrive. Good management in the 1970s and 1980s restored water quality and allowed the lake to become the Walleye Capital of the World. Today excessive nutrient loading has returned and many of the problems of the 1970s are back. The challenges are great and the solutions are different, but the lake is resilient and if we have the political resolve, it can be brought back again.

A 420‐Year Perspective on Winter Lake Erie Levels

“…In addition to more direct climate linkages, the most extreme years during the observation period (1934 and 2020) coincide with major changes in land use and water management across the Lake Erie basin. The conversion of wetlands and forests to agricultural lands (∼1850 CE) has occurred over vast regions of northwestern Ohio, including in the >4,000 km 2 Great Black Swamp (Reutter, 2019) in the Maumee River watershed, which is the largest tributary contributing to Lake Erie (Mitsch, 2017) outside of the main Detroit River inlet. The loss of wetlands in the Maumee basin has been implicated in detrimental water quality, including major toxic algae blooms (ELPC, 2019).…”

The influence of environmental parameters on spatial variation in zoobenthic density and stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S) within a large lake

“…Lake Erie, the smallest of the Laurentian Great Lakes (hereafter Great Lakes) by volume, is also the productive lake in the system and can be divided into three bathymetrically delineated basins, each with distinct environmental characteristics (Mortimer 1987; Reutter 2019). Most water enters from two main tributaries (Detroit and Maumee rivers) into the west basin, travels the length of the lake, and exits via the Niagara River in the east.…”

Acclimating to degraded environments: The social rationale for swift action on restoration

“…In the 1960s, western Lake Erie faced intensive, harmful algal blooms due to point-source pollution and runoff from coastal urban centers (28). The resultant shortages in clean drinking water, limited beach use, and declining fisheries heavily impacted coastal communities (18). Reflecting these trends in pollution and reliance, public awareness of water quality issues was (1) higher among communities in close proximity to the lake and (2) peaked in 1969-1975 (Fig.…”

“…These measures rapidly reduced point-source pollutant loading by stakeholders in Lake Erie (Fig. 4g), benefiting coastal communities that also incurred the greatest mitigation costs (18).…”