LEVERAGING LONG-TERM RESEARCH TO
Evaluate Impacts ON THE LOWER FOOD WEB IN LAKE MICHIGAN
LAKE MICHIGAN’S LOWER FOOD WEB is intricately linked, with each component playing a vital role in sustaining the overall ecosystem and maintaining the lake’s ecological balance. Throughout its history, Lake Michigan has been subjected to numerous stressors such as nutrient loading, overfishing, pollution, invasive species, and climate change that generate intense ecosystem stress and interrupt important food web connections like larval fish populations. To understand, predict, and manage larval fish populations in an environment this large depends on long-term research, targeting ecological conditions and processes that are constantly changing over extended periods of time. Gaining insights into larval fish development and dynamics helps researchers assess the health of Lake Michigan’s ecosystem, as they support many important commercial and recreational fish species. CIGLR Food Web Laboratory Analyst Maddie Tomczak and Associate Research Scientist Casey Godwin, PhD (U-M, CIGLR), in collaboration with NOAA GLERL’s
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Madeline Tomczak preparing a neuston net to sample for larval fish in Lake Michigan. Photo: Aubrey Lashaway
Ecosystem Dynamics branch, are collecting
“Over the years, a range of research
ecological data as part of NOAA GLERL’s
questions concerning larval fish species
Long-Term Research (LTR) program and
such as Alewife, Bloater, and Yellow
conducting targeted fundamental research
Perch, have been investigated,” said
on Lake Michigan’s larval fish populations.
Tomczak. “Data from the LTR program have
The LTR program provides a unique
proven to be a valuable resource, enabling
research opportunity that integrates a core
us to examine historical information, such
set of long-term biological, chemical, and
as water temperatures, and evaluate
physical observations, with short-term
how larval fish recruitment indices may
process-based studies for understanding
change in response to environmental
ecosystem change. Such information is
fluctuations. Sampling larval fish provides
essential for developing new concepts,
valuable insights into spawning success,
models, and forecasting tools to explore
habitat use, and recruitment to the adult
impacts of various stressors on the
population. These fish are crucial not
ecosystem.
only as prey for other fish, but also hold