In the Lower Green Bay & Fox River Area of Concern, partners have worked together on a multi-step process for over a decade to develop fish and wildlife metrics, select habitat restoration sites and generate project concepts, and implement projects anticipated to meet goals for priority fish and wildlife habitats and population groups. Our presentation will summarize how this process has laid a foundation for the development of restoration designs across 12 large-scale projects. We'll also focus on how monitoring efforts being implemented at different scales, such as the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program, Wisconsin DNR Fisheries Monitoring, and Citizen-Based Monitoring, are being leveraged to help guide the development of multi-faceted restoration criteria at Cat Island, Longtail Point, and the Duck Creek Delta restoration projects in Green Bay. Lastly, we'll provide examples of how these monitoring efforts will continue to be leveraged to verify that this science-based decision-making process has resulted in accomplishing fish and wildlife goals across projects in the Area of Concern.
Hillman Marsh is a designated Provincially Significant Wetland on the east side of the Pelee Peninsula, on Lake Erie. The formerly barrier-protected marsh covers a total area of nearly 1,000 acres providing ecosystem services to the region and critical habitat to endangered species and migratory bird populations. Due to the combined effects of human-induced disruption of coastal processes and increasing climate-related impacts, the barrier beach that once protected Hillman Marsh now features an irreversible breach approximately 500 meters wide. This has resulted in the destruction of habitat, loss of wetland species, impairment of ecosystem services, and has exposed the perimeter dikes surrounding the marsh to waves generated on Lake Erie. These dikes protect more than 2,000 hectares of low-lying agricultural and residential lands from catastrophic coastal flooding. With funding from the Canada Water Agency, the Essex Region Conservation Authority supported by a multi-discipline consulting team have developed an ambitious strategy to restore the Hillman Marsh barrier beach and wetland through a combination of traditional engineering and nature-based approaches. Construction is slated to begin in the second half of 2026. The presentation will explore the history of the site and the development of innovative concepts for the largest barrier beach and coastal wetland restoration project ever initiated on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes.
This presentation will convey lessons learned from successful coastal wetland restoration work in the open waters of excessively turbid Sandusky Bay without the use of anthropogenic water level manipulations. This talk will include a brief overview of Lake Erie coastal wetland status and restoration strategies over the past 150 years, with discussion on the ecological winners and losers associated with coastal Lake Erie’s ubiquitous water management infrastructure. To achieve the aspirational goals of restoring coastal wetlands throughout Sandusky Bay and other coastal estuaries (sans costly water management infrastructure), alternative restoration strategies and mindsets are needed. These turbid, eutrophic, high wave energy dynamics pose numerous challenges to restoring coastal wetlands, but they also offer fantastic opportunities for passive sediment capture. Lessons learned from recent and ongoing restoration projects within Sandusky Bay will be shared, including: quantifiable sediment and nutrient load reductions, native wetland plant selection/installation/predation, along with strategies to mitigate invasive species impacts (including carp and plants like Phragmites australis). Lastly, discussion on future large-scale restoration opportunities, economies of scale, and recommendations for reducing the “cost per acre” of wetland restoration.
The presentation will showcase two very different project sites where the City of Lorain used ecological solutions to address environmental challenges stemming from urbanization and heavy industry. The Martin’s Run Ecological Restoration Project will highlight how Lorain decreased localized flooding through the conversion of low-yield agricultural land into a high-quality stream and wetland complex that provides nearly 20 acres of publicly accessible space and 19 acre-feet of stormwater retention. The Reclamation Site Restoration Project marks a major milestone—the final Management Action in more than a decade of coordinated work to remediate legacy environmental impacts along the Black River and its riparian corridor stemming from historic steelmaking operations. Attendees will gain insight into how the City of Lorain completed over 20 projects and implemented large-scale solutions over 15 years that contributed to habitat restoration, the recovery of the Black River, and its eventual delisting as an Area of Concern.
Great Lakes communities are experiencing escalated threats from extreme flooding and erosion due to fluctuating lake levels, increased severity of storms, and other climate impacts.This presentation will provide an overview of two programs that provide technical support and capacity building to such municipalities: the Initiative for Resilient Great Lakes Coasts, funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and implemented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Great Lakes & St.Lawrence Cities Initiative, and the Resilient Coastal Projects Initiative, funded largely by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and administered by the Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. Both programs engage communities across the region to advance coastal resilience projects and build local capacity to incorporate nature-based solutions. Program leads will share program models and municipal engagement approaches, and program partners will present nature-based designs and their co-benefits within the context of select projects. As many of these projects begin to conclude and/or move onto future phases, presenters will be able to share some of these communities’ most prominent challenges and opportunities. In the event the symposium allows for multiple sessions on this topic, another 15-30 minutes would be dedicated to detailed project examples across the Great Lakes coast.
The presentation highlights two climate and coastal resiliency projects completed by BNW in collaboration with landowners and stakeholders. The first features a coastal resiliency effort along the Niagara River on Grand Island; the second details a stream relocation project on Cayuga Creek in the Town of Niagara. Both projects employ innovative, nature-based techniques that strengthen community resilience while restoring essential fish and wildlife habitat. The session will also examine key challenges encountered and share best practices and lessons learned from each project.
The amplitude, frequency, and direction of Great Lakes water-level changes over the coming decades is uncertain, with the potential for dramatic impacts on coastal ecosystems and the rare species that depend upon them. Whether the trend will be lake-level rise and ecosystem inundation or lake-level recession and potential ecosystem expansion is unclear. Identifying which species and coastal regions are most likely to be impacted by lake-level fluctuations will help focus resources on the most sensitive species and places. We developed a GIS model to predict lake-level changes using outputs from two regionally downscaled climate models and evaluated how those changes affected the total area of coastal ecosystems in Michigan and increased or decreased habitat for thirteen rare plant and animal species. These species represented a wide range of taxanomic groups and habitat requirements. Regions and ecosystems predicted to have significant responses to modeled lake levels, unsurprisingly, tended to be those with shallow near-shore topography or bathymetry such as Saginaw Bay. Our model predicted both habitat loss and gain for most species, depending largely on the climate model. Our results are an initial step toward proactively prioritizing Great Lakes coastal conservation. Future models that explicitly incorporate species demography, invasive species responses, and other ecological complexities will improve the realism of predictions and therefore conservation outcomes.
Along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan, bluff failures are influenced by lake water levels, bluff groundwater saturation, and lithology. The bluffs are composed of unconsolidated glacial tills interbedded with/overlain by glaciodeltaic sand and lacustrine silt and clay, and experience toe erosion, creeping, and slumping. Lake Michigan water levels peaked at record levels in 2019-2021 following a prolonged below-average period ( -2013), accelerating toe erosion and prompting widespread public concern. This study examines three sites in Michigan: Lakeshore Dr. in St. Joseph (SJo), subdivisions at Miami Park (MP), and a natural area near Ludington (LU), all exhibiting active groundwater seepage at clay layer contacts in the bluffs. Surface point clouds derived from UAS (drone) nadir and oblique imagery (2016-2022) and 2012 LiDAR datasets document erosion, landslides, and bluff top retreat at all sites. The unmanaged LU site experienced 177,000 ± 2,300 m³ of erosion at high water levels from 2019-2021, roughly three times the 2012-2019 rate. At MP, an area with several distinct management strategies applied, significant retreat occurred adjacent to locations armored with large boulders, with slumps causing losses of as much as 5-10m, where nearby densely vegetated slopes with active surface water management near the bluff showed minimal erosion. These observations highlight the complex interaction of management decisions and natural drivers to shape bluff failure outcomes.
Wetland ecosystems are negatively impacted by invasive species proliferation, often driven by disturbance and nutrient pollution. Prior research has shown that invasive clonal plant harvesting [e.g. hybrid cattail (Typha × glauca)] effectively reduces invasion pressures to improve biodiversity across trophic levels. This practice, however, accumulates metric tons of low-value biomass rich in viable propagules leading to biomass movement and cost impracticality. Biochar production from invasive biomass shows potential for storing long-term carbon and sorbing available soil solution nutrients while concurrently reducing biomass volume. Biochar is produced when organic material is pyrolyzed in a low-oxygen kiln to produce stable carbon with high cation-ion exchange capacity. This presentation summarizes our current successes and challenges in biochar production / wetland reapplication following hybrid cattail harvesting. Furthermore, this session will share current research results from our team’s multi-year large-scale experiment[total = 56 plots; plot size = 1.1 acres] at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge near Saginaw, MI. This research investigates peak biomass cattail harvesting [control, annual, biennial] and annual cattail biochar production/reapplication [0 metric tons (T) / hectare(ha), 10T/ha, 50T/ha] at a land management scale to serving as a launching point to scale–up ecological restoration while closing logistic loops in invaded wetlands.
Phragmites australis is among Ontario’s most problematic invasive plants, degrading wetlands and coastal habitats, and reducing biodiversity. Located on a constructed landform on Toronto’s waterfront, Tommy Thompson Park is highly vulnerable to invasive plant species. Phragmites rapidly outcompeted native vegetation across more than 8 hectares within emergent aquatic zones, sheltered embayments, and terrestrial habitats. Toronto and Region Conservation Authority initiated the Tommy Thompson Park Phragmites Management Strategy in 2018. The program was designed to follow a 5 year adaptive management framework, integrating chemical control (glyphosate), mechanical removal (mowing and spading), annual monitoring (site specific and PAMF), and targeted restoration. Management is implemented annually across all impacted areas and outcomes are strong, with overall phragmites decline by 90% (notwithstanding annual variability). Native aquatic vegetation is recovering through natural regeneration and planting. A secondary invasion of Flowering Rush is being managed in the Triangle Pond wetland coinciding with meadow marsh and upland meadow restoration. Although planned as a 5-year strategy, the inter annual fluctuations in abundance highlight the necessity of sustained monitoring and maintenance to preserve biodiversity. In 2025, a biocontrol nursery was established to introduce moth control agents as part of the management approach; monitoring results are expected in a few years.
