Lake Ontario’s Dynamic Coast: Analyzing Ecosystem History for Sustaining Environmental Health

The unifying goal in this multi-institutional and multidisciplinary study is to construct a historical record of a diverse set of ecosystem attributes of bays, lagoons and wetlands along the Lake Ontario coast. The project is being conducted by multiple investigators at four universities: Nelson G. Hairston Jr. and Linda Wagenet at Cornell University, Donald J. Leopold at SUNY ESF, Dorothy M. Peteet at Columbia University, and Charles T. Driscoll at Syracuse University. Contact information for the investigators is below.

Project Description
The shallow water and wetland habitats along the Lake Ontario coast have been experiencing gradual environmental change since the end of glaciation, rapid human induced change in the last few centuries, and artificial hydrologic stabilization in the last 42 years. We propose to add historical ecosystem analyses to a multidisciplinary research effort of three New York universities on a series of embayments and lagoons on the southern and eastern coasts of Lake Ontario.  Our historical ecosystem analyses will be based on shared use of short and long cores extracted from embayment sediments and wetland peat deposits.  Ecosystem components that will be analyzed include wetland plants, zooplankton, large scale vegetation, sediments, nutrients, metal concentrations, and other physical and chemical attributes.  No past Great Lakes core-based research has attempted to develop a coordinated historical reconstruction of biological, chemical, and physical change at the ecosystem scale, and use that information to explain current conditions of public interest.  Current knowledge of the formation of the Lake Ontario coast and related environmental policy will be combined with our historical findings to develop educational materials and activities aimed at the public and engaged government agencies. Our ecosystem history study has direct value for the current international effort to assess environmental impacts of regulating Lake Ontario water levels, and it contributes to a set of priorities of the Lakewide Management Plan.

Investigators:

Nelson Hairston, Jr.
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
ngh1@cornell.edu

Charles T. Driscoll Jr.
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13244
ctdrisco@mailbox.syr.edu

Donald J Leopold
Environmental and Forest Biology
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 
1 Forestry Drive
Syracuse, NY 13210
dendro@syr.edu

Dorothy M. Peteet
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
Columbia University
NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies New Core Lab
Palisades, NY 10964
peteet@ldeo.columbia.edu

Linda Wagenet
Center for the Environment Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
lpw2@cornell.edu

Sponsor: The New York State Great Lakes Protection Fund.

The New York State Great Lakes Protection Fund provides a perpetual and dependable source of
funds for regional and statewide research projects aimed at protecting and conserving the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem in New York State. The Fund was created in 1990 through legislation that allows New York to use a portion of the earned interest on the endowment created by seven of the eight Great Lakes states, called the Great Lakes Protection Fund.

New York State Great Lakes Protection Fund
New York Department of Environmental Conservation
270 Michigan Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14203-2999