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Presented at the NABS Annual meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2002
in Current and Future Approaches for Using Benthic Algae to Monitor and Assess Aquatic Ecosystems I
GREAT LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS: DIATOM-BASED ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN NEARSHORE AND COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS.
J.C. Kingston. Natural Resources Research Inst., University of Minnesota Duluth, Ely Field Station, Ely, MN, USA 55731
As part of a larger U.S. Environmental Protection Agency STAR grant program to develop ecological indicators for the nearshore and coastal regions of the United States, we are developing diatom indicators for wetlands, bays, and nearshore portions of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Our design follows from EMAP program sampling suites and detailed methods developed for offshore areas of the Great Lakes and for large sets of smaller lakes in EMAP – Surface Waters. The Great Lakes Environmental Indicators (GLEI) project pilot collections from the 2001 field season (over 400 diatom samples and 200 Water Quality samples and field profiles) are initially being evaluated to show the potential for diatoms to provide paleolimnological baselines in depositional zones and to perform power analyses to define efficient sampling to discriminate different ecological condition based on diatom indicators.
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