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 [...]