Resources

The Great Lakes Ecoregional Plan identifies all native species, natural communities and aquatic systems characteristic of the Great Lakes region and outlines how many of and where these elements of biodiversity need to be protected over the long term. In addition, this plan identifies broad-scale threats to Great Lakes biodiversity and begins to develop strategies to address these threats. This plan was replaced by the Binational Great Lakes Biodiversity Conservation Strategies.

This Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands Monitoring Program involves monitoring of Great Lakes coastal wetland biota, habitat, and water quality to provide information on coastal wetland condition using fish, birds, calling amphibians, wetland vegetation, aquatic macroinvertebrates, and water quality. Limited data from this monitoring is available to anonymous users, while the remaining of the data is available to registered users. Data from this monitoring program is used to inform the IBIs in the Coastal Wetlands Progress Tracker.

CanVis is a visualization program used to "see" potential impacts from coastal development or sea level rise. Users can download background pictures and insert the objects (hotel, house, marina, or other objects) of their choosing. The software is used by municipalities to brainstorm new ideas and policies, undertake project planning, and make presentations.

The Nature Conservancy in collaborating with citizens, public agencies, academic institutions and other nonprofit groups is working to restore the health of Green Bay for people and nature. One of the many challenges facing the bay is the loss of coastal wetlands, which clean polluted water, intercept waste, protect our shorelines from erosion, provide food and shelter for migratory birds and serve as nurseries for fish and other aquatic life.

Overview The Global Surface Water Explorer maps the location and temporal distribution of water surfaces at the global scale for 1984-2015 and provides statistics on the extent and change of those water surfaces. Users can view the data on an interactive map or download datasets.

SimCoast is a fuzzy logic rule-based expert system designed to enable researchers, managers and decision-makers to create and evaluate different policy scenarios for coastal zone management. It is interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral. It aims to combine traditional and advanced specialist knowledge about coastal zones with a set of reasoning and analytical tools. Experts involved include engineers, natural and social scientists, lawmakers, administrators, community and national leaders.

SLAMM-View is a web-mapping application that portrays pairs of simulation results from the Sea Level Affects Marshes Model (SLAMM) with other contextual layers such as state and county boundaries, roads, and National Wetland Inventory data via web mapping services. SLAMM-View utilizes a combination of server and client software (Java and Java-script) based on Image Matters' userSmarts.

UNIBEST (UNIform Beach Sediment Transport)-CL+ is a tool for modeling sediment transport along the coast.

The Western Lake Erie Nutrient Source Inventory (NSI) is an interactive map showing sources of nutrients in the Western Lake Erie watershed. The NSI looks at urban and rural sources of runoff throughout the Western Lake Erie Basin that are contributing to harmful algal blooms.