Decision-Support Tool Data for Lake Erie and Lake Ontario

To create this decision support tool, we undertook extensive literature review on how decision support systems/tools are developed and utilized related to large lake basin management. We identified key components of decision support framework and established process to develop a decision-support framework followed by a systematic tool. Furthermore, we held a workshop and stakeholder consultation to refine and further seek stakeholder inputs. To help steer the research outputs and outcomes, we are focusing on the co-creation of decision support tools to manage two major nutrient inputs: agricultural inputs and Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). It is imperative to obtain relevant stakeholders and decision-makers data, therefore, we sought memberships from the following working group (some already confirmed).

1. Successfully established membership in Conservation Halton as Board of Director for the year 2019-2022. This membership allows access to key Lake Ontario stakeholders and senior executives who are responsible for making decisions related to Lake Ontario. It is expected that valuable stakeholder ranking data (through Delphi methodology) will be obtained in the coming weeks.

2. Other groups that Highly Qualified Personnel has joined include Lake Erie Working Group, the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Advisory Committee, and the International Joint Commission. We continue to attend stakeholder meetings and obtained critical data that will form inputs to developing decision support framework. As an outcome of such meetings, additional stakeholders were identified, and interviews were conducted with farming communities. We established the use of Delphi method with a panel of stakeholders to formulate hypothesis related to agriculture and CSO and their relative ranking in the group setting. Currently, we are making headway progress in establishing a Driver–Pressure–State–Impact Response (DPSIR)-based decision-analysis framework at Lake Erie and Lake Ontario scale.

Decision-making in the face of uncertainty, while involving multiple stakeholders with different interests and objectives that evolve over time, is a challenging element in environmental management with significant economic implications. Stakeholders will often have decision-support tools to help them make informed and thoughtful choices in a complex environmental decision-making context that accounts for value trade-offs and uncertainty. Our decision-makers currently don’t usually have full information to make decisions about the lakes and the watersheds and this is evident by the recurrent algal bloom issue in Lake Erie. The aim of this project is to co-create decision-support tools with stakeholders to make informed decisions to address this algal bloom issue at Lake Erie while focusing on Agriculture, Combined Sewer Over Flows (CSO) and Bypasses from Wastewater Treatment Plants.

Note, that this research is part of the “Lake Futures: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity and Resilience of Lakes and Their Watersheds: Work Package 5". Lake Futures is a Pillar 3 project under the Global Water Futures Program funded by Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

Kranzberg, G., & Jawed, Z. (2019). Decision-Support Tool Data for Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Waterloo, Canada: Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN). (Unpublished Data).

unavailable
Unpublished dataset