Since the creation of the Great Lakes with the last Wisconsin glaciations, its ecosystem has endured a diversity of impacts from humans and its surrounding environment. Today, the Great Lakes continue to face numerous challenges from a variety of threats that at times appear to be more rigorous than those of the past. Great Lakes restoration and conservation involve issues ranging from the legacy pollutants of years past, such as heavy metals and synthetics, to an exotic species invasion and quantity issues such as overconsumption. The looming threat of climate change is one of the most challenging that the Lakes will face in the next decade unless changes are made in human behavior. With these and other threats in mind, this issue of Environmental Practice is dedicated to the challenges of Great Lakes sustainability. This issue concludes the thematic year for the journal, which focused on international issues.
Environmental protection cannot succeed without adequate public understanding, especially within the environmental community. Petersen, Hall, Doran, and Kahl start the issue off with an examination of the perception of climate-change adaptation among Great Lakes resource managers and recommend ways to improve perceptions among practitioners. Next, Uvaas, Fayram, and Axness discuss the decision made by an informed community, with an analysis of decision criteria management, specifically focused on fish populations, and the beneficial use impairments in the Lower Menominee River area of concern. By assessing the efficacy of remediation efforts in a specific location, the authors develop criteria for general assessment of beneficial use impairments.
Battisti, Franco, and Luiselli discuss the application of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats approach to protected area management, finding that a hierarchical approach hinders management effectiveness, whereas Ekman, Ankley, Blazer, Collette, Garcia-Reyero, Iwanowicz, Jorgensen, Lee, Mazik, Miller, Perkins, Smith, Tietge, and Villeneuve describe an ongoing multiagency effort to develop and implement effects-based monitoring and surveillance (EMBS) tools for the Great Lakes basin by using targeted and open-ended discovery techniques. The authors examine scenarios that align EMBS options with management goals.
Pearsall, Khoury, Paskus, Kraus, Doran, Sowa, Taylor, and Elbing analyze biodiversity conservation strategies within the Great Lakes by applying the results of four completed studies on Lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario to a fifth study currently under way for Lake Superior. These studies found that aquatic invasive species are the greatest threat that the Great Lakes face, followed by incompatible development, climate change, terrestrial invasive species, dams and barriers, and non-point-source pollutants.
For this issue on Great Lakes sustainability, I am proud to welcome Dr. Susan Hedman, of US EPA Region 5, who serves as a guest editor. Dr. Hedman was appointed to direct the EPA's activities in the six-state Great Lakes region by President Barack Obama in 2010. As administrator of EPA Region 5, she is responsible for the EPA's activities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and 35 tribal governments. As part of this position, she serves as Great Lakes National Program Manager, overseeing the restoration and protection of the world's largest freshwater system. Prior to serving at the EPA, Dr. Hedman was senior assistant attorney general in the Illinois attorney general's office and chief legal officer for the United Nations Compensation Commission tribunal.
Finally, I thank the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) and the editorial advisory board of the journal for facilitating the journal's grow and change over the years while I served as coeditor with James Montgomery. Since assuming our duties on the journal, we have changed, with the help of the publisher, the cover design and the layout, including the sections of the articles, and revised the editorial board. The journal reflects a diversity of issues for practitioners that spans both environmental public policy and science, such as brownfields, environmental justice, and most recently a year of international concerns regarding Europe, China, and the Great Lakes. This is a period in which I will transition back into my research agenda with a focus on environmental policy and science for the next decade. I have enjoyed hearing from the journal's readers, as well as serving NAEP.
