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Great Lakes Center expands on projects
LENONS offers opportunity for improved water quality in lake
By Michael Canfield
On April 26, 2012
Buffalo State's Great Lakes Center continues to help make strides toward restoring Lake Erie, with
several on-going projects aimed at figuring out how to do just that.
According to its website, the center received a boost in funding this year for a total of $4.5 million,
which funds 17 projects. Last year, the center received funding for 10 projects at $2.1 million.
One of the major projects the center is involved with is the nearshore and offshore Lake Erie nutrient
study, or LENONS. The study, headed by Christopher Pennuto, a professor in the biology department,
looks to determine how nutrients enter and move through the lake and how they affect the lake.
Lake Erie has had issues with nutrients in the water in the past, Pennuto said. This led to dead fish and
the pea-green color the lake had at one time. Legislation passed in the 1970s eliminated a lot of the
nutrients from places like waste treatment plants that are found in the water. The nutrients, however,
seem to have returned to the lake.
"What we've seen over the last decade is that a lot of those same issues have recurred," he
said. "There's a resurgence of some of those major issues. We've had algae washing up on the shore,
botulism, those issues."
The study looks to find out where these nutrients are coming from, after the original sources were
cleaned up in the '70s. Another part of the study looks at the role invasive species have played in the
upswing in nutrient issues, Pennuto said. Zebra mussels and quagga mussels are the two dominant
invasive species currently in the lake.
"They filter the water, and in doing so, they suck up all of the algae and the food resources for the base
of the food web and send it to the bottom of the lake," he said.
This gives the lake a clear, clean appearance, which isn't necessarily healthy.
"Sunlight can reach the bottom, and we have stuff growing up off the bottom that didn't use to grow
there," Pennuto said. "The role that the mussels play is still an unknown."
The project sets out to map the lake to see where the mussels are, and figure out where the abundance
of nutrients are located. It also looks at what is happening near the shoreline, as opposed to further
out in the lake. This involves doing a lot of the research in the field, said Mark Clapsadl, field station
manager and research associate at the Great Lakes Center.
"It's fairly challenging to conduct field work away from your home base, and this project requires a fair
bit of that," he said.
Despite the challenges involved, the project is important because of the impact it will have on the lake,
Clapsadl said.
"Ultimately these nutrients have impacts on all of the organisms that are using the lake, including us,"
he said. "Without a good understanding of the processes that are operating in the lake, it is difficult for
those responsible for managing the watershed to make good decisions or to take any kind of action to
help protect the quality of lake waters."
The information ascertained in the study will eventually be published and peer-reviewed by the
scientific community, to make sure it stands up to scrutiny, Pennuto said.
"Ultimately, somebody has to decide," he said. "Are we going to draft new legislation to control things?
Are we going to change fishing regulations? Are we going to force waste water treatment plants to do
something different? Somebody at some level has to make those decisions, and we inform them of
those decisions."
Michael Canfield can be reached by email at canfield.record@live.com.
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