For immediate release: August 18, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—A Case Western Reserve University biologist is designing a new environmental model to preserve the Great Lakes.

Joseph Koonce

In studying the health of the Great Lakes, scientists have taken a narrow approach by focusing on the effects of chemical pollutants or non-indigenous species invading the lakes, according Joseph Koonce, Case chair and professor of biology.

He will expand the focus to explore the interacting effects of stresses, ranging from fishery exploitation to land use changes, on the overall health of the Lake Erie ecosystem. Understanding the relationship among stressors will enable environmentalists and governments to have a new model for preserving the lakes, he says.

He also says he believes that it will be the answer as to why the lakes continue to decline in health while they have been cleansed of many chemical pollutants.

Koonce recently received a three-year, $748,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to collaborate with former faculty member Benjamin Hobbs, now with The Johns Hopkins University. Their project is called, "Development of a regional-scale model for the management of multiple-stressors in the Lake Erie ecosystem."

This new management approach to the Great Lakes is an idea that Koonce and Hobbs have been talking about and presenting to ecologists around the country. He wrote a white paper called "Changing Ecology of the Great Lakes" for the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission's Emerging Issues Workshop in February at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin. The new grant will allow them to test the scientific foundations of this new approach.

"With this grant, we will be able to look at everything from the watershed to the whole lake system for the accumulative stressors and the way they influence the system," says Koonce.
He states that without a coordinated management system of the lakes, "the system will continue to surprise us because they are unpredictable. We have put them in that state by our past practices."

A vehicle now exists to conduct this study, says Koonce.

Building on previous EPA funding, Koonce and Hobbs plan to link earlier whole ecosystem modeling and risk assessment to a more systematic exploration of land-water interactions on the health of Lake Erie. The new project will extend the previous work by characterizing the effects on land use changes and land cover of all of the Lake Erie watersheds on nutrient landings, flow regimes of tributaries and availability of habitat for Lake Erie fish species.

Using Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping techniques and available data base of land and river topography, Koonce says they can make predictions about locations of different fish habitats in the tributaries.

With support from the Ohio Coastal Management Assistance Grants Program, work began over the past year on identifying and inventorying fish habitats for spawning and nursery areas of Lake Erie fish species.

He explains that many native species have had their spawning habitats disrupted by unpredictable flows of water, running off the landscape changed by developments.

Invasive species have easily adapted to their new environments. However native fish-which have adapted to the river habitats over thousands of years in the river tributaries to the lake-now find their environments disrupted by periodic and unpredictable high and low levels of water that resulted from changes on the landscape.

The significance of the stressor-response management system of the lake is that it will provide a management model for linking land use changes to fisheries in other areas around the country from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, explains Koonce.

Koonce explains that this is a unique approach to studying the health of Lake Erie. "What we need to do is embrace what we are doing on the land and how we can preserve central features that minimize this disruption, in addition to looking at the chemical pollution and exotic species that we have been so focused on," adds Koonce.

"This new research can lead to smart development areas where development is encouraged because of its low impact on the water system, while other areas with a high impact on the water system should be discouraged from development through lack of public support for infrastructures and tax abatements or laws passed to protect the land," states Koonce.

–Case–

 

Legal Information | © 2003 Case Western Reserve University | Contact the Department