Great
Lakes
national
&EPA
On the Web at:
www.epa.gov/glnpo
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Great Lakes National Program Office
Significant Activities Report
November 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
• Assessing the State of the Lakes
• Innovative Sediment Treatment Tech-
nologies Featured
• 2002 Conservation and Native Land-
scaping Awards
• New Journal Publications
• Birds on the Move
Assessing the State of the Lakes
The fifth biennial State of the Lakes Eco-
system Conference (SOLEC) was held in
Cleveland, Ohio from October 16th to 18th.
The theme for this year's conference was
"Biological Integrity of the Great Lakes."
SOLEC Plenary Session
In morning "plenary" sessions, scientists
presented assessments of Great Lakes eco-
system components through data on over 40
indicators. Separate assessments of each
Great Lake, the St. Clair River - Lake St.
Clair - Detroit River ecosystem, and the St.
Lawrence River were also presented. New
indicators were presented and discussed for
the categories of ground water, forests, agri-
A SOLEC Breakout Session
culture, and societal response. Afternoon
breakout sessions allowed lively in-depth
discussions on interpreting the results of the
various environmental indicators, as well as
how the new proposed indicators would
help in assessing the state of the Great
Lakes ecosystem.
A new feature introduced at this SOLEC
was a "Managers' Conclave," an opportu-
nity for senior-level managers of environ-
mental and natural resource agencies to
meet to discuss the implications of the re-
ported state of the Great Lakes.
Approximately 400 people attended
SOLEC, representing U.S. and Canadian
federal agencies, states, provinces, munici-
palities, industry, environmental groups,
academia and private citizens. Products
prepared for the conference included Imple-
menting Indicators (a collection of 35 indi-
cator reports), Implementing Indicators
Addendum (8 additional indicator reports),
Proposed Changes to the Great Lakes In-
dicator Suite, and Evaluating Biological
Integrity in the Great Lakes Ecosystem.
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November 2002
Significant Activities Report
GLNPO's Display
"Fulfilling a Vision for the Great Lakes"
These documents are available upon request
on a CDROM. The results of SOLEC will
be used to prepare the State of the Great
Lakes 2003 report, which is expected to be
released mid-Summer, 2003.
GLNPO showed its new display, Fulfilling
a Vision for the Great Lakes in the exhibits
area of the conference and distributed nearly
300 of the new Great Lakes Watershed
CDROMs and other brochures and posters.
Meanwhile, at the Great Lakes Binational
Toxics Strategy display, over 100 CDROMs
containing the 2002 Annual Report and the
5-year Retrospective were distributed.
(Contact: Paul Bertram, 312-353-0153, ber-
tram.paul@epa.gov)
Innovative Sediment Treatment
Technologies Featured
From October 16th to 18th, several members
of GLNPO's Sediment Assessment and
Remediation Team attended the "Sediment
Quality Assessment 5" conference in Chi-
cago, Illinois. This international conference
. I nteM"notlon£iI
Sy mp»os i u rn
Aquatic tcosyctom Health and ManagarmmL Society
Sediment Quality Assessment Symposium Graphic
is organized biennially by the Aquatic Eco-
system Health and Management Society.
GLNPO was one of the sponsors of this
year's event. Dr. Marc Tuchman co-
moderated a conference session on
"Sediments and Watershed Management."
Scott Cieniawski presented a paper on
"Innovative treatment technologies for con-
taminated sediment in the Great Lakes: 3
pilot-scale demonstrations," co-authored
with Dr. Tuchman. The paper detailed the
results of the Cement Lock, Minergy Glass
Furnace, and Electro-Chemical Remedia-
tion treatment technologies. Demaree Col-
lier presented a poster exhibit on "Post-
remediation Sediment Assessment on the
Raisin River, Monroe, Michigan," co-
authored with Mr. Cieniawski. The poster
summarized the results of a survey that was
carried out following the 1997 sediment
cleanup at the Ford Motor Company outfall
site on the Raisin River. The objective of
the study was to assess the effectiveness of
the remedial actions. (Contacts: Marc
Tuchman, 312-353-1369, tuchman.
marc@epa.gov; Scott Cieniawski, 312-353-
9184, cieniawski.scott@epa.gov; Demaree
Collier, 312-886-0214, collier.
demaree@epa.gov)
2002 Conservation and Native
Landscaping Awards
Underwriters Laboratories Inc. and Ameri-
can NTN Bearing Manufacturing Corpora-
tion were the corporate winners of the 2002
Conservation and Native Landscaping
Award. This award, presented by the U.S.
EPA and Chicago Wilderness, honors cor-
porations that show leadership in caring for
their corporate landscapes through the use
of native plants. The awards were bestowed
on November 20th, at the Chicago Wilder-
ness Congress in Libertyville, Illinois at the
Lake County Forest Preserve District's In-
dependence Grove Visitors Center.
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U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office
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Significant Activities Report
November 2002
Tallgrass Prairie Restoration
at NTN Bearing Manufacturing Corporation
"Calumet is My Back Yard" won an honor-
able mention certificate for their natural
landscaping efforts in Southeast Chicago.
This is the first year the awards program is
recognizing corporate natural landscaping
efforts. Park District and Municipal 2002
Conservation and Native Landscaping
Award winners will be announced in early
December and awarded in January 2003, at
the Illinois Association of Park District an-
nual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. (Danielle
Green 312-886-7594, green.danielle@epa.
gov)
New Journal Publications
Several journal publications were published
by GLNPO staffers or about GLNPO-
sponsored work:
"Environmental and Socioeconomic Indica-
tors of Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem
Health" was published as a chapter in the
book entitled Managing for Healthy Eco-
systems by Lewis Publishers. This chapter
briefly reviews the SOLEC context for en-
vironmental indicators, chronicles the
SOLEC process for selecting indicators,
presents the Great Lakes suite of 80 indica-
tors, and provides examples of indicator in-
formation that has been reported through
the SOLEC process. (The full reference is:
Bertram, Paul, Harvey Shear, Nancy
Stadler-Salt and Paul Horvatin. 2003. Envi-
ronmental and Socioeconomic Indicators of
Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem Health, in D.
J. Rapport, et al., eds., Managing for
Healthy Ecosystems, Lewis Publishers,
New York., pp 703-720.) (Contact: Paul
Bertram, 312-353-0153, bertram.paul@epa.
gov)
"Quantifying Uncertainty: Are We There
Yet?" was accepted for publication in the
journal, Quality Assurance: Good Practice,
Regulation, and Law, Volume 9, Issue 3-4.
The paper focuses on techniques used for
quantifying uncertainty utilized in the Lake
Michigan Mass Balance Project. It was
originally presented at EPA's 21st Annual
Conference on Managing Environmental
Quality Systems held in April 2002.
(Contact: LouBlume, 312-353-2317,
blume.louis@epa.gov)
A featured article, "The Great Lakes' Inte-
grated Atmospheric Deposition Network:
The United States and Canada Continue an
Effective Partnership That Measures Non-
point Source Pollution," was published in
the September 1st issue of Environmental
Science and Technology. The article, au-
thored by Stephanie S. Buehler and Ronald
A. Kites of Indiana University, describes
the IADN air monitoring network and pre-
sents recent findings from IADN. The
IADN network is operated cooperatively by
GLNPO and Environment Canada to meas-
ure pollutants coming into the Great Lakes
from the air from wet (rain and snow) depo-
sition, dry (dust) deposition, and absorption
of gas pollutants into the water. IADN has
been in operation since 1990.
U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office
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November 2002
Significant Activities Report
oungstown
The article can be found on the Internet at:
http: //pub s. acs. org/i sub scrib e/j ournal s/
esthag-a/36/i!7/pdf/902hites.pdf.
(Contacts: Melissa Hulting, 312-886-2265,
hulting.melissa@epa.gov; Todd
Nettesheim, 312-353-9153, nettesheim.
todd@epa.gov)
Birds on the Move
Funded by a GLNPO grant, the University
of Vermont recently completed a project to
establish migratory song-
birds as biological indica-
tors of nearshore habitat
quality. Researchers as-
sessed stopover length and
energetic condition change
in migratory songbirds
during stopover on the
south shore of Lake On-
tario, and identified areas
where migratory birds con-
centrate during migration
in the Lake Ontario basin.
Over 35,000 birds of 120
species were captured,
tagged, and released dur-
ing research at two field
stations near Rochester,
New York. Radar technol-
ogy was utilized to evalu-
ate entire landscapes and
pinpoint the areas where
large numbers of birds
concentrated during migra-
tion in 2000 and 2001.
NEXRAD weather surveil-
lance radar images were
examined to detect migratory bird move-
ments as flocks of birds climbed into the
sky at the onset of nocturnal migration. The
study provides evidence that nearshore
habitats in the Great Lakes basin not only
host large numbers of migrating birds dur-
ing stopover periods, but that these sites
may also provide the resources necessary
for the birds to refuel for the next stage of
their migratory journey. Therefore, conser-
vation efforts need to target these nearshore
areas, especially because these areas are un-
der a great deal of development pressure.
(Contact: Karen Rodriguez, 312-353-2690,
rodriguez.karen@epa.gov)
w
Janwstown
Hamsport
+ Moraartown A QimtetJSflil
I A^_? ^
\ '+ York *
Westminster
Radar Imaae from National Weather Service: KCCX 03:54 UTC OB/30/Z001
Bird Migration Image on NEXRAD Weather Radar During Clear Weather
(Intense image near center of radar station is due to ground clutter, reflections
further out are migrating birds).
We welcome your questions, comments or
suggestions about this month's Significant
Activities Report. To be added to or re-
moved from the Email distribution of the
Significant Activities Report, please contact
Tony Kizlauskas, 312-353-8773,
kizlauskas.anthony@epa.gov.
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U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office
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