Benthic Algal Community Composition in the Laurentian Great Lakes (2024)

This data set includes information on benthic algae community composition collected during the growing season of 2024 at stations located along the U.S. shoreline of Lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Benthic algal community observations were taken by scuba divers in the field and by personnel in the lab during sample processing, including detailed microscopic examination of selected samples, with the goal to determine primary and secondary dominance of five major algae categories: Cladophora, Chara, Diatoms, Non-branching Filamentous Green Algae (NBFGA), and Other. Similar Benthic Algal Community data for 2018-2023 have been published (https://doi.org/10.5066/P14BWEKZ). This dataset is part of a larger data set that includes algal and dreissenid mussel biomass; water quality assessments; and diver observations of dreissenid mussels, round gobies, benthic substrate, and benthic algal cover. We refer to the benthic algal community also as the Cladophora community and submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in other published project data, which were collected starting in 2018 as part of the Sentinel site project (Great Lakes Science Center, 2018) and expanded to fish spawning reefs in 2024 as part of the Great Lakes Spawning Whitefish and Invasive Mussels (SWIM) project (SWIM, www.glc.org/work/swim)