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Agenda

• SOLEC 2000 Presentations:
  • Day 1
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
  
  
• SOLEC 2000 Background Papers:
  • Selection of Indicators for Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem Health, Version 4, March 2000
  • SOLEC 2000 - Implementing Indicators, Nov.2000

The governments of Canada and the United States hosted the fourth State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) in Hamilton, Ontario, October 17–19, 2000.

SOLEC is a biennial conference to report on the health of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem, as well as reporting on progress towards the goals of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. SOLEC conferences in 1994 and 1996 examined the state of various components of the ecosystem through the use of ad hoc indicators, and provided subjective assessments of certain environmental conditions. At SOLEC 98, a comprehensive suite of 80 Great Lakes ecosystem health indicators was presented for review, refinement and acceptance. A recent Environment Canada publication, the Science and the Environment Bulletin, highlights the work of SOLEC 98. You can view the Bulletin online.

Environmental management agencies are being asked to demonstrate that past actions have been successful and that future programs will result in measurable environmental improvement. This, and the demand for high quality data, are forcing government and private sector organizations throughout the basin to be more selective and more efficient in the collection and analysis of data. An understanding by stakeholders about what information is necessary and sufficient to characterize the state of Great Lakes ecosystem health (using the suite of indicators) should foster cost-efficient and relevant monitoring programs.

The SOLEC process is a rare opportunity to bring stakeholders together to identify common objectives and data needs, and to encourage cooperative data collection, evaluation and reporting. Unlike previous SOLECs that emphasized the development of core indicators to represent the state of major ecosystem components for the Great Lakes, the focus of SOLEC 2000 will be reporting on 25-30 of the suite of 80 proposed indicators. Future SOLECs will eventually report on all 80 indicators. In addition, SOLEC 2000 will look at implementing indicators and current issues at 3 different scales - the basin-wide scale, the individual lake scale and the local scale.

A more detailed mailing about SOLEC 2000 including registration documents, will be issued in late May of this year. For further information about SOLEC and Great Lakes indicators, visit: http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/solec/ and http://www.epa.gov/glindicators/

Harvey Shear, Ph.D.
Canadian SOLEC Co-chair
416-739-4704
harvey.shear@ec.gc.ca

Paul J. Horvatin
U.S. SOLEC Co-chair
312-353-3612
horvatin.paul@epa.gov