GLIN==> Renowned Freshwater Scientists to Converge in Duluth

>
>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 17, 2011
>
> CONTACTS:
>
> June Kallestad, UMD's Natural Resources Research Institute, 
> 218-720-4300, jkallest at nrri.umn.edu <mailto:jkallest at nrri.umn.edu>
>
> Sharon Moen, University of Minnesota Sea Grant Program, 218-726-6195,
>
> smoen at d.umn.edu <mailto:smoen at d.umn.edu>
>
> Renowned Freshwater Scientists to Converge in Duluth
>
> /Discussions focus on problems and solutions for the world's large lakes /
>
> / /
>
> *Duluth, Minn*. -- "Big lakes -- Big world" is the theme for the 54^th 
> International Conference on Great Lakes Research, which is drawing 
> more than 600 scientists from around the world to Duluth, Minn., for 
> the first time ever. The conference, convened by the International 
> Association for Great Lakes (IAGLR), will be held at the Duluth 
> Entertainment Convention Center (DECC), May 30 -- June 3.
>
> A media conference will be held *May 31 at 10 a.m. in the DECC Board 
> Room* with plenary speakers Marianne Moore and Sally MacIntyre, along 
> with other scientists and conference organizers. Included in this 
> release are five story leads that involve the work of Minnesota 
> scientists who are available for interviews for pre-conference stories.
>
> The plenary speakers showcase research pulled from around the globe to 
> Duluth.
>
>     * *Marianne Moore*, aquatic ecologist from Wellesley College,
>       co-leads a team of Russian and American scientists who are
>       analyzing a 60-year dataset for Lake Baikal, the oldest,
>       deepest, largest (by volume) and most biotically diverse lake in
>       the world. Moore is the opening keynote speaker on *May 31 at
>       10:40 a.m.*
>     * *Sally MacIntyre*, a physical limnologist/oceanographer from the
>       University of California -- Santa Barbara, will give a plenary
>       address titled "Climate Related Variations in Mixing Dynamics in
>       the African Great Lakes" on *June 1 at 11:10 a.m.*
>     * *John Goss*, Asian carp director, Council on Environmental
>       Quality in Washington D.C., chairs a team of federal, state and
>       local agencies working together to prevent Asian carp from
>       establishing populations in the Great Lakes. He will give an
>       address titled "The Asian Carp Control Strategy" on *June 2 at
>       11:10 a.m.*
>
> "Scientists don't Twitter and Facebook about their research. They come 
> together to discuss and question and be amazed by the findings of 
> their colleagues," says Randall Hicks, IAGLR conference organizer and 
> UMD professor. "And the research is driven by relevance to real 
> problems we're facing around the world, like the spread of invasive 
> species. This is our opportunity to compare notes and learn from each 
> other."
>
> For more information, visit the conference website: 
> www.iaglr.org/conference <http://www.iaglr.org/conference>
>
> ---more---
>
> * *
>
> *What Happens on Land... Doesn't Stay There (This ain't Vegas!)*
>
> Sess16: Linkages Between the Landscape and Great Lakes Coastal 
> Ecosystems//
>
> In a challenged economy, making the most of limited funding is 
> critical to managing water resources wisely. Does it make sense to 
> spend $10 million to clean up one polluted harbor slip? Or let prime 
> lakeshore property go undeveloped because of contaminants? Or spend 
> millions to restore impaired water systems when conservation costs so 
> much less? Scientists at the IAGLR conference will discuss the 
> critical connection between land use and water quality.
>
> "Our biggest problems today aren't factories or industries emitting 
> large volumes of pollutants," says Joel Hoffman, EPA research 
> biologist. "It's our collective, individual actions on land -- from 
> fertilizing our lawns to urban sprawl. But new technologies can help 
> us formulate better, targeted approaches to improving water quality."
>
> A good example is development of new GIS (Geographical Information 
> Systems) tools that can show where flow paths are carrying pollutants 
> from the land to the water so mitigation can be focused most 
> effectively. More good news is funding released in 2010 to restore the 
> Great Lakes that will also help the economy. For example, restoration 
> of natural bays and vegetation to Duluth's industrialized lakeshore 
> will bring back the insects and the fish, and eventually make it 
> hospitable to humans, too.
>
> Local Interviews:
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute/
>
> *Gerald Niemi*, Senior Scientist
>
> *George Host*, Senior Scientist
>
> / /
>
> /U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and 
> Development/
>
> /Mid-Continent Ecology Division, Duluth/
>
> *Joel Hoffman,* Research Biologist
>
> *Peder Yurista, *Research Biologist **
>
> ---end 1---
>
> *Curbing Chemical Abuse in Lake Superior*
>
> Sess21: Assessing Effects of Toxic Substances in the Great Lakes
>
> Sess17: Contaminants of Concern: How Far Have We Come and Where Are We 
> Going?
>
> We've improved our lives with chemicals -- from pharmaceuticals to 
> flame retardants -- but now we have to deal with their implications 
> for our environment. This year, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency 
> (MPCA) and partners from around Lake Superior are marking 20 years 
> toward a goal to curb the discharge of nine designated toxic 
> substances into lakes and streams. Are we curbing the lake's chemical 
> abuse problem?
>
> "It's more vulnerable than it looks," explains Carri Lohse-Hanson, 
> MPCA Lake Superior coordinator. "Lake Superior is cold and huge and 
> tends to hang on to some toxic chemicals longer than the other Great 
> Lakes. Protection and prevention are essential because 'fixes' are not 
> easy, quick or cheap."
>
> Estrogen-like chemicals are feminizing fish. Mercury from coal-burning 
> and industrial emissions has led to fish consumption advisories. DDT, 
> toxaphene, PCBs and dioxins... unfortunately, we've become all too 
> familiar with chemicals in our freshwater resources. Along with the 
> "legacy chemicals" we have "newcomers" -- like /polybrominated 
> diphenyl ethers/ (PBDEs) widely used to make flame retardant fabrics 
> and building materials. Once chemicals get into the water systems they 
> can move up the food chain, eventually to people. The MPCA and 
> partners around Lake Superior initiated the "zero discharge 
> demonstration" in 1991 with a goal of zero by 2020.
>
> Local Interviews:
>
> /Minnesota Pollution Control Agency /
>
> *Carri Lohse-Hanson*, Lake Superior Coordinator
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute/
>
> *Patrick Schoff*, Aquatic Toxicologist
>
> ---end 2---
>
> * *
>
> *Large Lakes Reflect a Changing Climate *
>
> Sess3: Climate Variability in Large Lakes Mediated by 
> Continental-to-Global Scale Forcing**
>
> Sess29: Paleoclimate Records of Large Lakes
>
> Sess35: Great Lakes Adaptive Management and Climate Change
>
> Sess4: Global Trends in Lake Temperature and Associated Impacts on 
> Lacustrine Systems
>
> Two researchers with the University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes 
> Observatory (LLO) are participating in the IAGLR conference in ways 
> that will clarify how large lakes both archive and respond to changes 
> in the Earth's climate. Professor Erik Brown's work spans over 100,000 
> years of information extracted from the bottoms of the world's oldest 
> lakes. His research contributed to a fascinating hypothesis that 
> "megadroughts" affected the spread of early /Homo sapiens/ out of East 
> Africa.
>
> Brown's colleague, associate professor Jay Austin, on the other hand, 
> worked with timescales of days to decades to reveal, along with LLO's 
> Steve Colman, that Lake Superior is responding to a warmer climate 
> more dramatically than reported for the world's other massive lakes. 
> Brown and Austin will be joining plenary speakers professor Marianne 
> Moore from Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Professor Sally MacIntyre 
> from Santa Barbara, California, in sharing fresh insights into how 
> large lakes are helping us to understand Earth's changing climate.
>
> Austin said, "New technologies are giving us access to a phenomenal 
> amount of information about Earth's climatic past and about what's 
> happening now. The sincere hope is that this information will help us 
> understand a complex planet and deal with an uncertain future."
>
> Local Interviews:
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory/
>
> *Erik Brown*, Professor
>
> *Jay Austin*, Associate Professor
>
> ---end 3---
>
> *Lake Superior's Native Fauna Puts "Nutrient Elevator" Back in Operation*
>
> Sess10: Exploring Food Web Linkages and Dynamics in the Upper Great 
> Lakes: Past, Present and Future
>
> Sess12: Restoration and Management of Native Deep-water Fish 
> Communities in the Great Lakes
>
> Today, another mass migration in the offshore waters of Lake Superior 
> is occurring. Creatures as small as a grain of rice to two-foot-long 
> siscowet lake trout will swim over 150 yards up the water column at 
> dusk; they will swim back down at dawn.
>
> "It's as if they're working night shift on the 35^th floor of a 
> high-rise," said Tom Hrabik, associate professor with the University 
> of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). "Hundreds of tons of fish and zooplankton 
> make this huge vertical migration every day for most of the year."
>
> Hrabik, along with EPA ecologists Jack Kelly and Mike Sierszen, UMD 
> associate professor Stephanie Guildford, and others are generating a 
> new awareness of how the native food webs of the Laurentian Great 
> Lakes functioned by studying Lake Superior's restored offshore flora 
> and fauna.
>
> "We're realizing more than ever that depth matters," said Sierszen. 
> "Deep lakes cycle nutrients and energy differently when the native 
> fauna is intact and differently than shallower lakes."
>
> Sierszen studies the lynchpin of Lake Superior's native offshore food 
> web, the opossum shrimp (/Mysis relicta/). Guildford speculates that 
> /Mysis'/ daily patterns drive what the researchers have dubbed a 
> "nutrient elevator" cycling much-needed phosphorous to a blanket of 
> phytoplankton suspended below the lake's surface.
>
> Local Interviews:
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's Department of Biology/
>
> *Tom Hrabik*, Associate Professor
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's// Large Lakes Observatory/
>
> *Stephanie Guildford*, Associate Professor
>
> / /
>
> /U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and 
> Development/
>
> /Mid-Continent Ecology Division, Duluth/
>
> *Jack Kelly*, Research Ecologist
>
> *Mike Sierszen*, Research Ecologist
>
> / /
>
> ---end 4---
>
> *Goaded by Gobies and Other Aquatic Invasive Species*
>
> Sess18: Recent Impacts of Invasive Species on the Great Lakes Ecosystem
>
> Sess19: Great Lakes and Global Invasions
>
> Sess28: Ballast Water Treatment and the Great Lakes
>
> Sess11: Gobies in the Great Lakes and Their Watersheds
>
> U.S. "Carp Czar" John Goss is jetting into the IAGLR conference to 
> talk about federal responses to the dark possibility that Asian carp 
> will invade the Great Lakes. However, perhaps the most compelling 
> evidence that aquatic invasive species (AIS) command attention is that 
> over 50 other presentations will also focus on AIS, including several 
> directly involving the Duluth-Superior Harbor, an epicenter for 
> non-native species sightings.
>
> Using harbor water and large aquaria, Donn Branstrator, associate 
> professor at UMD, and his associates are defining the ability of 
> zooplankters to establish new populations in terms that promise to 
> help the International Maritime Organization ground ballast water 
> treatment standards in science. Meanwhile, Anett Trebitz, an EPA 
> ecologist, and her colleagues are conducting trials in the harbor to 
> shed light on approaches for detecting non-native animals, like 
> Branstrator's zooplankters, before the water becomes lousy with them. 
> Both lines of research have international implications.
>
> "The bottom line is, new species continue to arrive but it is truly 
> difficult to find them unless they become abundant," Trebitz said. 
> "People should know that many scientists are putting considerable 
> effort into preventing species invasions, identifying potentially 
> invasive species, and managing them in ways to protect the Great Lakes."
>
> Local Interviews:
>
> /University of Minnesota Duluth's Department of Biology/
>
> *Donn Branstrator*, Associate Professor
>
> /U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and 
> Development/
>
> /Mid-Continent Ecology Division, Duluth/
>
> *Anett Trebitz,* Research Ecologist
>
> ---end 5---
>

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