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April 15, 2021

Sustainability – A misused concept that we need to think about

By Bev Clark for the Lake of the Woods Water Sustainability Foundation

I recently heard an ad for a major bank that claimed its products were the key to a sustainable future. I also remember when a patch of cattails in the corner of a parking lot was passed off as sustainable development. That was, at best, an effort towards lower impact development. Is there even such a thing as sustainable development? I tend to doubt it. Still, we need to think about sustainability with each management decision that we make and especially as it relates to ecosystem integrity.

To incorporate the concept of sustainability into management goals, it is important to be able to clearly define what you mean by “sustainable”. Sustainable development or sustainable futures are concepts that are lined on both sides by tiger traps. However, if you want to sustain ecosystem integrity then it might not be so difficult to come up with a definition of sustainable or to describe what it is you are trying to sustain. The goal, in this case, would be to sustain the integrity of the ecosystem.

In some theaters of resource management, such as with fisheries, the inclusion of the concept of sustainability is an integral part of the process. Fish should be allowed to recruit and grow to the best of their ability so that we can eat as many of them as possible. The goal to sustain a reasonable harvest is more or less straightforward. We need to monitor the situation to make sure that we don’t upset this apple cart by eating too many fish or by allowing some external process to affect the ability of the fish to maintain a high level of production—habitat loss and stuff like that. On the other hand, there are aspects of resource management that are difficult to assess within the context of sustainability. Invasive species is a good example. Your goal might be to have no further incidents of invasive species ,which would protect ecosystem integrity. The question is how far can we go with these invading species before we lose the ability to sustain the integrity of the ecosystems that we are trying to protect?

The 2nd edition of the Rainy-Lake of the Woods State of the Basin Report (2014) listed five key concerns, namely:

Nutrients and algae
Climate change
Invasive species
Water levels and erosion, and
Contaminants

These same concerns were carried forward into the International Joint Commission (IJC) Water Quality Plan of Study and into a recent IJC initiative to develop water quality objectives and alert levels for the watershed.

Let’s look at each of these and see if there is a place for a conversation about sustainability.

Nutrients and algae – There are several initiatives underway to identify target loads to the Rainy River that will improve water quality in the south end of Lake of the Woods and these would presumably involve an acceptable condition with respect to nuisance algal blooms. In this way an endpoint has been described that we hope can be sustained. The big question is whether or not climate change will play ball.

Climate change – There are two parts to this climate change concern. In the first place, we don’t want to sustain it, we want to get rid of it to stop the devastation to our planet. That comes with a set of goals that limit warming. These are usually in the form of do-not-exceed temperature increases. Greenhouse effects have been noted since the late 1800s and continued alarm has been demonstrated through the 1950s to the 80s with the final push to protocols in the 1990s…and still the problem worsens. You might think we are not going to get a handle on this which brings us to the second part – which is dealing with the stress multiplying effects of climate change in every aspect of ecosystem integrity sustainability. The gigantic elephant in the science room.

Invasive species – This is a tough challenge. It is noble to have a no invasives goal, but they are difficult to stop completely. They have potential to do great harm to the ecosystem and it is almost impossible to keep them out, such that we can’t really address the threats from the standpoint of sustainability. We can only direct our best efforts towards minimizing the potential for damage to the ecosystem.

Water levels and erosion – This one is a bit easier. We can adopt rule curves for water levels that describe water level envelopes that outline a sustainable condition. It’s about avoiding the extremes and these tools work well for the most part. Where is that elephant?

Contaminants – Regulators can provide a list of concentrations that describe levels that would be considered too high for any given contaminant. It’s not really a sustainability thing but you could consider that any ecosystem that is free from contaminant exceedances is sustainable with respect to contaminants.

Fisheries – I am going to throw fish in here because there is some recent evidence that they may be impacted in the northern sectors of Lake of the Woods. When it comes to fish, or anything else that is harvested, it is relatively easy to describe a sustainable condition. Fisheries managers use tools that describe recruitment, growth, yield, harvest, etc., and these are all designed to tell us how well the fish are doing and what the impacts are of us catching them and eating them. The goal is to sustain the best possible balance.

To sum this up, sustainability is not a word that you can just throw out there because it sounds responsible. We need to think about how we want to use the concept of sustainability, and we should because no one wants to be in a position where it becomes obvious that “this is not sustainable!”

February 17, 2021

Water Levels – Ins and Outs and Ups and Downs

By Bev Clark, for the Foundation.

In my career as an Environmental Officer and later as a Scientist I have attended many public meetings where water levels were the primary issue. It is nearly impossible to make any gains at such a meeting because there are always exactly half of the people who want the water levels higher and exactly half that want them lower. Its all about the docks…right? OK so here’s the thing, although the regulatory agencies do consider multiple uses, the finer details are almost never about your dock.

Apples and Oranges in Lake of the Woods

For many years now there has been a focus on determining the causes of nuisance algal blooms in Lake of the Woods. We know, based on a volume of scientific evidence, that too much phosphorus is the culprit, and this fact steers the question towards how much phosphorus is too much phosphorus?

In order to answer the question, we need to determine:

How is phosphorus getting into the lake? and then,
What are the effects of that phosphorus on the algal community?Rainy River at Long Sault Rapids. Photo Lee Grim

This is a difficult task, especially for a large international water body like Lake of the Woods. To get going we need to develop a phosphorus (P) budget (and several attempts have been made at this over the years). That will tell us how the P is entering the lake and how this affects in-lake P concentrations. If we can do this, we will have a handle on the first question and so the focus of this article will be a look at several different P budgets from different sources. We will need to leave that second question till later. It’s a bit of a Duesenberg.

Here (Table 1) we compare the components of three P budgets that have been developed for Lake of the Woods. The earliest attempt by Hargan et al. (2011) provided an initial budget that, while missing some crucial inputs, compares surprisingly well with later more rigorous attempts. Two recent budgets include: Minnesota’s Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the south basin of Lake of the Woods and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) effort to link phosphorus inputs to in-lake conditions throughout Lake of the Woods. It is important to note that all three of these budgets recognise that the lion’s share of both water and nutrients that enter Lake of the Woods do so via the Rainy River

OK so let’s get to this business of apples and oranges. If we want to compare the components of the three budgets outlined in the table, the first thing to do is look at what data are being used. If we look at the top of the table, we see that the TMDL study uses data from 2005 to 2014 and focuses on the south basin of Lake of the Woods. The ECCC budget uses data from 2016 to 2018 and incorporates the entire lake. Hargan used data before 2011 and described loads to the whole lake. Right off the bat we have apples and oranges. There’s more. If we look at the waste load estimates and glance up at the dates it seems likely that the TMDL loads includes the Abitibi pulp and paper mill in Fort Frances that was active during their data collection range (about 40 MT). For the ECCC budget the mill had shut down in 2014, prior to their study. It would have been active for Hargan’s attempt. It is easy to see why there may be differences in the estimates and there are similar problems with comparing line items stitched throughout the entire table. Use of the term tributaries has clearly different meanings in each of the three budgets. ECCC and Hargan may be comparing similar sources but the TMDL budget has a larger tributary number which contains Rainy River loads. Some of the largest differences are with internal loads (a large component) which was not included in Hargan’s budget. So, if we really wanted to get away from apples and oranges we would need to add or subtract loads from the idle Abitibi mill, add internal loads, compare similar areas, and so forth. That is not going to happen here.

Insert Table**

There is one final consideration. In these budgets, if most of the sources are considered and if the data are representative of average conditions, then the total loads should be similar. In this case since most of the load is from the Rainy River, we can cock our heads sideways and look at the total loads. We see that the TMDL and ECCC loads are similar. Hargan is lower but does not include an internal load.

At this point it is important to understand that both the TMDL study and the ECCC project have determined total loads and go forward to indicate reductions in P that are required to improve conditions in the lake. Hargan did not do that. Since reductions will occur primarily in the Rainy River we come to a spot where apples may be closer to apples. The TMDL study recommends an 17.3% reduction and the ECCC study says that a 20% reduction will fulfil most of their goals in the lake. Close. Of course, one study pertains to the south portion of the lake and the other encompasses the entire lake...sigh.

The good news here is that for the first time we have studies that recommend what must be done to ameliorate harmful algal blooms in Lake of the Woods. We can now start talking about these numbers. The next steps to meet reductions will be challenging but we have come a long way towards addressing these algal blooms. Stay tuned.