An assessment of the nearshore Cladophora monitoring dataset in the east basin of Lake Erie

Session: Poster Session

Megan McCusker, Environment and Climate Change Canada, [email protected]
Alice Dove, Environment Canada, Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Ontario, [email protected]
Todd Howell, Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Env. Monitoring & Reporting Br, [email protected]
David Depew, Environment and Climate Change Canada, [email protected]

Abstract

The nearshore zone of Lake Erie has been the subject of intensive field monitoring efforts over the past several years. Monitoring has been driven primarily by the need to determine the status, trends, and ecological factors affecting the growth of Cladophora glomerata, a nuisance benthic alga. The sentinel sites monitoring approach was developed to assess progress towards goals and to calibrate and provide field validation for Cladophora growth models, however, it has not been extensively explored in its own right. Here, we present an assessment of the sentinel sites monitoring dataset from the east basin of Lake Erie, which includes Cladophora, dreissenid mussel, and water quality data near the mouth of the Grand River from 2012-2017. This observational, monitoring dataset provides a valuable resource for identifying seasonal patterns and determining whether expected relationships between nutrients, light, dreissenid mussels, and Cladophora from the literature are borne out in the field data. Our findings reinforce the importance of light as a driver of Cladophora growth and point to some of the complexities associated with predicting Cladophora growth patterns in environments where light and nutrients may be inversely related to one another.