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Home > About GLERL > Mission and History
Mission Statement and History
GLERL's Mission Statement
The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) conducts high-quality research and provides scientific leadership on important issues in both Great Lakes and marine coastal environments leading to new knowledge, tools, approaches, awareness and service.
GLERL is a multi-disciplinary environmental research laboratory that provides a solid scientific understanding, as well as, the leadership necessary for the wise use and management of Great Lakes and coastal marine environments.
Major Goals
1.) To expand and improve scientific knowledge of acquatic ecosystems,
and processes within the Great Lakes and marine coastal environments.
2.) To develop new tools, approaches, and concepts for improved modeling,
predictions and management of issues within the Great Lakes and coastal
environments.
3.) To deliver services and expert information to the scientific, regulatory,
and coastal-user communities.
4.) To provide the general public with information and services to enhance
public awareness, understanding and safety.
5.) To lead and coordinate multi-institutional scientific program development
throughout the Great Lakes and coastal acquatic communities.
History
The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) facility operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), through the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR).
GLERL was officially created within NOAA on April 25, 1974 to provide a focus for federal research on the Great Lakes, America's fourth coast. The original GLERL was formed by merging staff from the Limnology and Computer Divisions of the Lake Survey Center of NOAA's National Ocean Service with the staff of the International Field Year for the Great Lakes (IFYGL) Office. The laboratory opened in Ann Arbor, Michigan in August, 1974.
By 1980 the laboratory had expanded to include a major research effort on the cycling of sediment particles and associated toxic organics, which were recognized in the Great Lakes Quality Agreement as a major environmental problem of the lakes. GLERL scientists led some of the early work in identifying and evaluating processes affecting the deposition and cycling of contaminants in the lakes and showed that the sediment zone is a major repository for contaminants and also a major source for recycling contaminants to the water column.
GLERL staff is encouraged to develop cooperative research projects with other agencies focused on specific major environmental issues in keeping with NOAA's mission and goals. Our water resources research area was expanded to include the impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes, which has led to GLERL's participation in the national Water Resources Forecasting (WARFS) Program. GLERL's scientific expertise on the movement and cycling of sediment particles, and circulation measurements and modeling, has led to several large joint research programs with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to develop contaminant mass balance models for selected areas: the Upper Great Lakes connecting channels, Green Bay, and Lake Michigan.
In 1989 the ecosystem dynamics component of GLERL added a small research project on nonindigenous species. Research started with the ecosystem impacts of Bythotrephes, the "spiny water flea" which had spread through most of the Great Lakes. However, with the discovery of zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) in Lake St. Clair, and the passage of the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Act of 1990, GLERL was tasked with developing a major program on nonindigenous species, focusing on the ecosystem and environmental effects of the zebra mussel.
In 1994 Thunder Bay, Lake Huron was designated as a National Marine Sanctuary, and became administratively housed at GLERL. The first GLERL website went online in June of this year also. A year later, in 1995, the Muskegon facility (located on Lake Michigan and the Muskegon Lake channel) was officially named the Lake Michigan Field Station.
In 1998 GLERL became involved in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl Midwest Regional Competition for high school students, which continues to be an important annual outreach event. Members of GLERL accompany the winning team to Alpena, MI where the students get to explore shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The students then travel down through Grayling, where they learn about forest habitat, to Muskegon, where they get to go out on one of GLERL’s research vessels.
In 2002 GLERL acquired the Research Vessel Laurentian from the University of Michigan. The 80 ft. vessel sits at its homeport at the Lake Michigan Field Station in Muskegon, MI.
Today, GLERL is actively involved in research on ecological prediction,
aquatic invasive species, physical environment prediction, and environmental
observing systems. Specific research projects include studies on the zebra
mussel in the Great Lakes, the impacts of climate change on the Great
Lakes and mid-U.S. water resources, the development of coastal environmental
forecast systems, Great Lakes water supplies, water level forecasting
and regulation, the use and dissemination of satellite imagery for environmental
products development, the factors that affect and determine the bioavailability
of toxic organic chemicals, environmental reconstruction (retrospective
analysis) from sediment core records, the ecosystem and water resources
problems of south Florida - the Everglades and Florida Bay, and the seasonal
hypoxia of the coastal Gulf of Mexico.
Relationship to NOAA's Mission
NOAA's stated mission is to conserve and manage wisely the Nation's coastal and marine resources, and to describe and predict changes in the Earth's environment to ensure sustainable economic opportunities. NOAA's continuing role has been to protect life and property, predict environmental changes in time and space, provide decision makers with reliable scientific information, and foster global environmental stewardship. In order to better focus on achievement of progress under this mission, NOAA has established a Strategic Plan to carry it through the year 2005. This plan includes seven interrelated goals grouped under two primary missions: Environmental Assessment and Prediction and Environmental Stewardship. GLERL's research programs support several goals under both mission groups:
Environmental Assesment and Prediction Mission
Advanced Short-Term Warning and Forecast Services: to provide significantly improved short-term warning and forecast products and services, for a broad spectrum of environmental events, that enhance public safety and the economic productivity of the Nation. GLERL's research products related to water level forecasting, lake circulation models, seiche and wave forecast models provide and improve short-term forecasts and warnings of hazardous conditions. The National Weather Service uses GLERL's wave forecast model for their operational responsibility to make wave forecasts for the Great Lakes. Local and state emergency preparedness units have GLERL's seiche model and use it for advanced prediction of significant seiches in certain highly prone areas of the Great Lakes, such as Lake Erie, Saginaw Bay, and Green Bay. GLERL scientists continue to work on advanced short-term forecast systems that incorporate and improve these models, such as the development of the prototype Great lakes Coastal Forecasting System, which is also a prototype for a national coastal forecast system. GLERL will participate in the new Water Resources Forecast System Program (WARFS) which will develop improved capabilities for forecasting water resources in the mid-west to provide advanced warning of conditions leading to, for example, the massive floods of 1994.
Implement Seasonal to Interannual Climate Forecasts: to reduce the disruption, economic losses, and human suffering that occur in response to changes in the climatological mean annual cycle. The Great Lakes Project is an interdisciplinary effort to assess responses and identify the implications of these changes for public policy. GLERL has primary responsibility for this project which is built around four primary thrusts: development of scenarios of climate variations; physical and economic modeling; assessment of climate impacts; and sustained monitoring of the physical-socioeconomic system. International coordination is underway with Canada with GLERL serving as the U.S. Chair of the Bi-National Great Lakes - St. Lawrence Basin Climate Change and Variability Project.
Environmental Stewardship Mission
Build Sustainable Fisheries: to increase greatly the Nation's wealth and the quality of life through a sustainable fishing industry that provides safe and wholesome seafood and recreational opportunities. GLERL's ecosystem and nutrient dynamics research provides the scientific basis for understanding what is happening in the lower trophic levels of the Great Lakes and how ecosystem changes might be affecting the valuable sport fisheries on the Great Lakes, which are valued at several billion dollars per year. GLERL's toxic contaminants bioavailability research addresses entry and transfer of toxic chemicals into and up the food chain that ultimately leads to fish and humans. Toxics have been implicated in an increasing incidence of reproductive problems and tumors in important Great Lakes fish, and are the basis for basin-wide fish consumption advisories.
Sustain Healthy Coastal Ecosystems: improved environmental indicators and integrated coastal management to promote ecosystem health and economic prosperity in coastal zones. The Great Lakes are America's fourth coast. In addition to extensive work in the Great Lakes, GLERL has or is conducting scientific work in other coastal areas, such as the South Atlantic Bight (coastal Carolinas), Florida Bay, Gulf of Mexico, San Francisco Bay, and off the coast of California. GLERL's biogeochemical processes, ecosystem and nutrient dynamics, aquatic nonindigenous species, aquatic contaminants, and physical limnology and oceanography research programs all meet objectives or goals contained in this mission group.
For example, GLERL's Nearshore Hydrodynamics Program is completing three years of intensive studies of the harbor and nearshore area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to better understand how nearshore processes contributed to the contamination of the Milwaukee drinking water supply by a massive overload of Cryptosporidium, leading to several deaths and illness in over 400,000 Miilwaukee residents.
Our aquatic nonidigenous species program has mounted the most comprehensive study in the United States of the effects of the zebra mussel on aquatic ecosystem dynamics and the resulting effects on economically valuable resources. Our research focuses on Saginaw Bay and western lake Erie, which are both sites of major recreational fisheries valued at over $1B per year and which may be threatened by the change in lower-end food supply and the shift of food resources to the bottom. Our research results will provide a guidepost to other managers of other ecosystems in the path of zebra mussels as they spread across the eastern United States.
GLERL scientists teamed with academic and other NOAA scientists to conduct a major study (NOAA Coastal Ocean Program, Nutrient Enhanced Coastal Ocean Productivity [NECOP]) of the Mississippi River outflow region of the Gulf of Mexico to examine the causes of a large zone of near-bottom hypoxia off the coast of Louisiana. More recently, several of our scientists are contributing their expertise and participating in research on the problems of Florida Bay and Everglades ecosystems related to diversions of freshwater flows in the region.
The Research by Region area shows the scientific studies that are being conducted in the Great Lakes Drainage Basin, the major coastal areas of the continental United States and internationally. although most of our work is focused on the Great Lakes, in keeping with our primary mission.
Last updated: 2004-05-26 jjs