Ecosystem Health of Large Lakes: Identifying Utility and Metrics

Executive Summary The GLFC in its Vision Statement embraces the concept of " Healthy Great Lakes Ecosystems " and more generally ecosystem health as goals for the commission and its partners. However, current milestones are qualitative and not necessarily indicative of ecosystem health. A theme area is proposed to determine if the health concept can be usefully and objectively applied to ecosystem management for great lakes and, if so, to identify useful metrics that can be used to guide management action and to evaluate progress. A series of questions concerning the theoretical and applied utility of the Ecosystem Health concept will be addressed in a series of four workshops bringing together scientists from around the world who are actively engaged in ecosystem analysis and management on great lakes and coastal seas. A Post Doctoral Fellowship in Great Lakes Ecosystem Health is established to facilitate the process and to assist participating scientists in synthesizing results and conclusions from the workshops. Outputs will be multi-authored review papers, based on the workshops, to be published annually over four years in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries The theme will be completed in time to inform and guide the next decadal revision of the GLFC vision statement in regard to healthy great lake ecosystems. The strategic vision of the GLFC embraces the ecosystem concept as underpinning its approach to management and research. The concept recognizes the complexity of the issues confronting the fisheries and the extensive linkages and interactions with other phenomena that can affect the structure and productivity of the Great Lakes fisheries. The ecosystem concept is the basis for three vision statements meant to guide activities of the commission in the first decade of the current millennium. These statements address: 1) healthy great lakes ecosystems, 2) integrated management of sea lamprey and 3) institutional/stakeholder partnerships; and the commission's vision establishes milestones for all three statements. However, in contrast, to the milestones for sea lamprey management that are quantitatively expressed and specify activities and geographic areas for attention or the milestones for partnerships that also call for a number of specific activities and timelines, the milestones for healthy ecosystems are broad and open ended. It may be inherently easier to specify actions or activities when only one species, e.g. sea lamprey, is targeted or when only human agencies and actions need to be mobilized and coordinated. In contrast, ecosystems inherently consist of multiple …