Habitat Restoration

To ensure the long-term viability and function of constructed fish spawning reefs in the St. Clair-Detroit River System (SCDRS), periodic maintenance and repair of the reefs are required. To remove sediment from reefs, researchers developed a portable pressurized water jet that can be deployed by a small vessel. Reef cleaning experiments were conducted during late summer and fall of 2018, with...

Environmental organizations from the United States and Canada have teamed up each year, as part of the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) program, to assess conditions in one of the five Great Lakes. . Each year, the survey focuses on a series of research areas, such as phosphorus and nitrogen input and movement through the food web, phytoplankton and zooplankton populations, and...

Cisco (formerly known as Lake Herring) Coregonus artedi are native shallow water coregonines which were formerly very abundant in the Great Lakes and provided large commercial fisheries and healthy prey to native piscivores. In most areas outside of Lake Superior, cisco abundance is greatly reduced and in Lakes Ontario and Erie they are uncommon to rare.

USGS scientists are collaborating with the National Park Service (NPS) to evaluate oak savanna restoration efforts in the Great Lakes by evaluating the success of different treatments in the southern basin and testing the efficacy of interseeding as a restoration tool.

Restoring and maintaining extent of native coregonid populations in the Great Lakes is a basin-wide priority. In response, an adaptive framework has identified knowledge gaps associated with spatial dynamics and stock diversity. This project used the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) with an incredible in-kind support from agencies and universities from across the region to...

Lake bottom environments are critical zones of interface between geology and biological processes that support health ecosystems and human well-being. Over the past thirty years, Great Lake food webs have become dominated by bottom dwelling invasive species and nuisance algae, that are poorly mapped and understood. USGS is developing a suite of new technologies to map habitat, invasive mussels and...

During the first five years of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, federal agencies and their partners worked to maintain, restore and enhance populations of native fish and wildlife species. The following actions were taken to conserve native species that were once broadly distributed across the lakes: Assisting with the delisting of the federally endangered Lake Erie water snake; Improving...

During the first five years of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, federal agencies and their partners worked to maintain, restore and enhance populations of native species. The following actions were taken to improve conditions for the endangered and threatened species: bog turtle, Canada lynx, copperbelly water snake, Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake, Hines emerald dragonfly, Karner blue...