Great Lakes Coastal Symposium 2024

This presentation is part of the Nature Based Solutions Organized Session.

The use of natural and nature-based features (NNBF) for erosion control and flood management along coastal shorelines is growing nationwide. However, as an emerging practice, there are limited tools available to guide landowners and practitioners in the selection of NNBF techniques. The State of New York is currently developing a web-based decision support tool (DST) to better inform the selection of NNBF practices with the intent to increase resiliency in coastal communities. The DST is semi-quantitative, combining engineering practices with ecological considerations in a tool that will be functional and easy to use for both non-professional landowners and professional designers and practitioners. This presentation will review NNBF practices on Great Lakes Shorelines and will review the tool, which is currently under development.

This presentation is part of the Nature Based Solutions Organized Session.

The Great Lakes shorelines have seen increased damages in recent years from flooding and erosion due to historically high lake levels, severe storms, and climate change. Cities are on the frontlines facing these issues and the most vulnerable communities often have even fewer resources to address them. This presentation will provide an overview of two programs that provide direct technical support to municipalities in the Great Lakes region. The two programs are the Initiative for Resilient Great Lakes Coasts, sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, and funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative's Resilient Coastal Projects Initiative, funded in large part through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Both programs engage with a cohort of communities to advance their coastal resilience projects and build local capacity for incorporating nature-based solutions into coastal hazard mitigation. This talk will share the program models and municipal engagement approach, and include a discussion of some of the challenges and opportunities identified thus far as this work continues. The program leads and partners will present engineered designs of innovative nature-based solutions with multiple co-benefits.

This presentation is part of the Nature Based Solutions Organized Session.

This presentation is part of the Nature Based Solutions Organized Session. 

Climate-induced flooding along the shoreline of Lake Ontario caused significant damage to infrastructure and property in 2017 and 2019. As climate change continues to impact lake levels in unforeseen and uncertain ways, the region faces a threat from increased erosion, flooding, and low water levels. It is critical to establish dynamic adaptation strategies that make communities better prepared to face the impacts of climate change. Even with many on-going state-level initiatives such as the Resiliency and Economic Development Initiative (REDI), Coastal Lakeshore Economy and Resiliency Initiative (CLEAR) and the Great Lakes Action Agenda (GLAA) pushing for nature-based shorelines, ecosystem-based shoreline management and resilient land use practices, structural solutions such as engineered shorelines remain the most popular mitigation strategy for shoreline communities and property owners. This project uses detailed interviews with adaptation professionals, county and regional planners and natural resource managers along the shoreline to identify pertinent barriers to the adoption of non-structural solutions for coastal adaptation. Using a barrier-analysis approach developed by Moser and Ekstrom (2009) - we outline barriers at various stages of the adaptation process, from strategy selection to implementation. We find that informational and resource constraints, misaligned incentives, and institutional and legal hurdles prevent a widespread adoption of non-structural adaptation strategies and suggest ways to overcome these barriers through alternative approaches to traditional adaptation governance mechanisms.

This panel is part of the Nature Based Solutions Organized Session.

This “double-block” session will include an overview of opportunities to continue knowledge sharing and dialogue around implementation of Great Lakes natural and nature-based approaches. Presenters from the organized session will respond to Q+A while participants have a chance to share their own stories. The facilitator will also highlight some regional and national resources and venues where participants can learn from each other and stay connected, including the Nature-Based Topics Page on NOAA’s Digital Coast and the Great Lakes Chapter of the cross-boundary Nature-Based Coastal Solutions Community of Practice.

The Coastal Wetland Conservation Framework is a binational, lakewide collaborative planning effort to establish baseline extent and condition of coastal wetlands that help partners prioritize where to work in order to achieve healthy Great Lakes and coastal communities. Lake Erie is the first of the Great Lakes to be piloted to demonstrate the Framework. This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to hear the latest developments of the Framework, including recent progress on a Decision Support Tool. During this interactive session, participants will also be invited to provide input on the desired status for key ecological and human well-being indicators of Lake Erie coastal wetlands.

Secretive marsh birds, such as grebes, rails, and bitterns, have received increased attention from the conservation community in recent decades due to declining populations, resulting in several species being identified as endangered and threatened at state levels and species of greatest conservation need in state wildlife action plans. Despite increased concern for these species, conservation activities targeting secretive marsh birds has been limited in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. To meet objectives for these species identified in regional and state conservation plans, greater communication, coordination, and collaboration among partners is needed to overcome barriers hindering marsh bird habitat conservation. With support from the Upper Mississippi / Great Lakes Joint Venture, a group of partners began work in early 2023 to create a framework that would provide the information and tools needed to deliver increased conservation activity for marsh birds. We will describe the process used to develop the framework and give an overview of the resulting vision, mission, goals, objectives, and strategies. We will also provide details on our plans for implementation, highlight current activities, and describe opportunities for people to get involved.

Hemi-marsh wetland habitat in the Calumet region of Illinois and Indiana provides benefits to marsh birds, other wildlife, and people. Through partnerships, Audubon Great Lakes has established marshbird and vegetation monitoring at over 40 sites across the region to track marshbird species' use of wetlands that have been restored and maintained over the last several years. We estimated trends in occupancy of 12 marshbird species during 2017 - 2023 and found that, on average, occupancy has remained stable in the Calumet region. Specifically, occupancy trends for 8 species were stable, Swamp Sparrow exhibited a significant positive trend, and 3 species exhibited non-significant negative trends (American Coot, Black-crowned Night-heron, Pied-billed Grebe). Several sites across the region had consistently high average marshbird occupancy during the 7-year period, demonstrating the importance of maintaining high-quality hemi-marsh habitat to sustain breeding marshbird populations in a highly urbanized landscape. For a subset of sites, we also estimated species-habitat relationships using a variety of site-specific characteristics (e.g. percent native vegetation, wetland type, muskrat presence). These results can be used to inform best management practices for wetland restorations aimed at recovering specific marshbird species or groups of species in the Upper Midwest.

From 2022 to 2024 Audubon, Ducks Unlimited, and NYSDEC partnered to restore/improve hemi-marsh habitat quality at Lakeview WMA. The goal of the effort was to improve habitat for spawning fish, waterfowl and secretive marsh birds. Funding for the work came from GLRI via NOAA, through a Regional Partnership with the Great Lakes Commission.

Since 2021, UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, Northeastern Wisconsin Bird Alliance, and Audubon Great Lakes formed a deep, collaborative partnership with the Oneida Nation through the successful implementation of a volunteer bird monitoring program at multiple restoration sites on the Oneida Nation Reservation located near Green Bay, Wisconsin. With the help of 100+ volunteers, we have conducted breeding grassland, marsh, and forest bird surveys and spring and fall migratory shorebird and waterfowl surveys at locations spread across five restoration sites, totaling >200 bird species. Program goals include 1) collecting an inventory of bird use on Oneida’s restoration lands, 2) providing bird-informed land management guidance to the Oneida Nation at their key restoration sites, 3) building a community of birdwatchers, 4) integrating Oneida’s beautiful culture, history, and language throughout the project with the leadership of an Oneida Tribal Elder, and 5) building bridges between the Oneida and non-tribal communities. Our collaborative project has witnessed incredible successes in terms of bird data collected; the integration of Oneida culture, history, and language into the project; a summer nature camp for Oneida youth; number of people engaged; volunteer events within the Oneida community; and land management decisions made. We will provide a brief overview of the bird monitoring program, describe how Oneida’s bird data are informing conservation and management, highlight how we are integrating Oneida knowledge into the project, and share a few “lessons learned.”

The 2024 Great Lakes Piping Plover breeding season had a mix of successes including the highest number of pairs since listing in 1986, and challenges including predation and unhatched eggs. The population of this Federally Endangered species is monitored by many partners yearly throughout the Great Lakes at known populations. Audubon Great Lakes and US Fish and Wildlife Service coordinate monitoring and outreach for the population in lower Green Bay, Wisconsin that has been present since 2016 after the creation of suitable habitat due to dredged sand. Piping Plovers successfully reproduced at the site in 2024 for the ninth consecutive year, and attempted to breed at a new site roughly two miles away for the second consecutive year. We will discuss the successes and challenges of the 2024 Great Lakes Piping Plover breeding season throughout the Great Lakes, and share case studies from the lower Green Bay population, including outreach and education strategies at a site with heavy boat and beachgoer traffic vs. at a site that is closed to the public, and preview how future restoration projects could increase habitat for this species in lower Green Bay.

Incorporating positive species interactions into ecosystem restoration is key to advancing conservation in a changing world. Identifying animals that can produce these impacts, then developing ways to harness these facilitation effects is critical to integrating this ecological theory into on the ground restoration and conservation efforts. Muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) are a native Great Lakes ecosystem engineer that alter wetland systems by generating clearings in vegetation to build their dens. I will be presenting my preliminary data showing significantly higher animal use of areas around muskrat dens than control regions, and analyses showing that muskrat den density is an important covariate to explain bird occupancy. Together, these suggest a powerful positive species interaction where muskrat dens facilitate increased biodiversity, particularly of regionally declining marsh birds.

Spring and fall migration are critical and highly vulnerable periods for most North American bird species. Globally, migratory birds are more likely to have declined in population than non-migratory species, and migration itself can be disproportionately more deadly than the rest of a bird’s life cycle. To reverse these declines, conserving and restoring critical migratory stopover sites is increasingly important. Among the most important and dangerous stopover regions in North America is the heavily urbanized Chicago metropolitan area, due to its intersection with a major migratory pathway and the Lake Michigan shoreline. In collaboration with local partners, we developed an interactive online mapping tool using ArcGIS Experience Builder to help identify areas with high quality habitats for migratory landbirds, threats, and opportunities for restoration within natural areas along the Illinois Coastal Region, which consists of Illinois’s coastline and river systems adjacent to Lake Michigan. We initially conducted a literature review to inform supporting information, mapping tools, and recommendations. We then created quality and restoration opportunity maps for three habitat types (woodlands, grasslands, and shrublands) by compiling and ranking a set of indicator datasets, including information from land managers in the region. We also reported different threats as individual layers for managers to identify potential localized stressors. Quality and opportunity layers and corresponding rankings were run through Zonation, a decision support software that generates spatial prioritizations, using the Additive Benefit Function (ABF) model. All protected areas in the Illinois Coastal Region were ranked based on these outputs and rankings, which resulted in a list of 8 protected areas in the region with high priority for migratory stopover conservation and management. We also developed overviews for 21 priority species based on local conservation scores, eBird abundance maps, conservation listings, and habitat needs during migration. To help guide land management in the region, we also synthesized the literature review and local expert opinion into landscape-scale, local-scale, and habitat-based recommendations. The Illinois Coastal Stopover Tool will help support the dedicated land managers working to improve habitat and support migratory bird conservation in the region.

The Laurentian Great Lakes host the largest collection of freshwater islands in the world with approximately 32,000 islands. Many of these islands hold significant ecological, economic, cultural, and historic significance and serve as an ecological refuge under a changing climate and developmental stressors. Despite the importance of these features, there are few resources to guide conservation actions for Great Lakes Islands. Therefore, the Great Lakes Coastal Assembly’s Island Workgroup is aiming to develop a series of island conservation priorities documents specific to each Great Lake to help direct conservation and restoration actions for Great Lakes islands. This nascent work is beginning with Lake Ontario and using the Islands of Life: A Biodiversity and Conservation Atlas of the Great Lakes Islands and regional expert insight to develop a review of the islands of Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River region priorities for conservation. The results of this review will help guide priority-setting by agencies and organizations, support grant applications, and bring attention to the inventory and data needs in cataloging and understanding the current state and conservation needs of Great Lakes islands.

The Niagara River Greenway is a corridor of places, parks, and landscapes that celebrates and interprets the natural, cultural, and recreational values of the Niagara River. The Niagara River Greenway Ecological Standing Committee (GESC) is a non-regulatory group with representatives for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Tuscarora Nation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, New York Power Authority, and Niagara Relicensing Environmental Coalition. Since 2009, GESC has distributed over $16 million from the New York Power Authority’s Greenway Ecological Fund to support sixty ecological enhancement projects implemented by about twenty unique not-for-profit organizations, research institutions, and municipalities. Many of these land protection, habitat restoration, stewardship, and research projects have been relatively small in cost and scale, and may not have been considered competitive for federal grant programs. However, taken together, GESC-supported projects are contributing substantially to the resilience of the Niagara River coastal zone and improving quality of life in local communities. This presentation will explore the cumulative ecological and cultural benefits of Greenway projects, which are easy to see but difficult to quantify. It will also present the GESC as a model for peaceful, consensus-based decision making by local knowledge holders with diverse perspectives.

Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay is one of the largest drowned river mouths in the Great Lakes at nearly 64 square miles, and it provides extensive ecological services as well as significant value to local identity and economics. The Bay historically supported widespread, diverse coastal wetlands supporting birds, amphibians, important fish spawning and nursery habitat, and more. Today, these wetlands and their benefits have largely been lost, and the Bay is plagued by high levels of turbidity and algal blooms.

In response, the State of Ohio Office of Coastal Management launched the Sandusky Bay Initiative (SBI), an ambitious, landscape-scale effort to restore holistic Bay functions for the benefit of both wildlife and people. This resulted in significant necessary research, fieldwork, and collaboration to understand existing conditions, impairments, and complex physical and biological Bay interactions, which informed models that enabled the team to evaluate intervention strategy effectiveness. Ultimately, The Nature Conservancy, with funding from H2Ohio, has developed a suite of innovative, synergistic projects aimed at reducing internal Bay sediment resuspension to facilitate wetland function reestablishment and maximize nutrient assimilation. A number of the projects have been funded and are underway. This presentation summarizes efforts that guided the comprehensive Bay restoration approach, as well as the innovative projects.

Confined Disposal Facilities (CDFs) are common in major Great Lakes cities to permanently house contaminated sediment. There are three CDFs in Toronto, located at the Leslie Street Spit. While one remains active, two have been decommissioned and restored to wetland habitat, representing a gain of 16.3 hectares (40.3 acres) of coastal wetland on the central Toronto waterfront and contributing toward the delisting of the Toronto and Region Area of Concern. Sediment capping was completed to physically and biologically isolate the contaminants within the CDFs and the surface was contoured to elevations to achieve marsh conditions. Drawing upon habitat designs from the Toronto Waterfront Aquatic Habitat Restoration Strategy, structural habitat features including rocky shoals, aquatic stump fields, and fish cribs, along with native emergent aquatic plants, trees and shrubs were installed to initiate the wetland habitat. Fish and water level control structures were installed to restrict invasive Common Carp into the wetlands, and to manage the wetland water levels independently of Lake Ontario. A major challenge since establishing the wetlands has been invasive plants, particularly Phragmites australis which outcompeted the native emergent aquatic vegetation community that established after construction. Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has successfully managed phragmites in the Cell 1 and Cell 2 wetlands since 2018, using an integrated approach including chemical and mechanical treatment. Through careful timing and management, a 3.33 hectare (8 acre) phragmites monoculture has been drastically reduced, and the native emergent vegetation communities have naturally regenerated. The Cell 1 and Cell 2 wetlands support a variety of wildlife communities including marsh nesting birds, turtles, and fishes, conserving biodiversity on the waterfront.

This presentation will highlight the extreme measures taken at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River near Joliet, Illinois to battle the front lines of Invasive Carp to protect the Great Lakes and planning, design, and construction battles it took to win the war.