NRES 103 Final Exam
What is the estimated cost borne by municipalities and industry to keep their pipes mussels free?
$600 million annually
What percentage of the world's water is freshwater?
2.5%
What percentage of available freshwater is located in the Great Lakes?
20%
What percentage of the Great Lakes' fish population does Lake Erie hold?
50%
How many continental divides are in North America?
6 Divides
What percentage of ships today are too big to navigate the St. Lawrence Seaway?
70%
What percentage of the planet is water?
71%
How many locks does the Welland Canal have?
8 locks
How many tons of cargo was the St. Lawrence Seaway designed to handle?
80 million tons of cargo a year
What is the total surface area of the Great Lakes?
94,255 Square Miles
What percentage of biomass in the Illinois river is made up of Asian carp?
95%
What percentage of the Midwest wetlands have been irradiated?
95%
What percentage of the world's port cities are within two stops of a Great Lakes port?
99%
What was the Great Lakes Fisheries commission?
A body that included representatives from the US and Canada created in the 1950s in response to the lamprey invasion and to coordinate fisheries management of the remaining native fish.
What did the Erie canal allow?
Allowed transportation between the lakes and the Atlantic Ocean
What is a glacial?
An interval of time within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances
What type of species are the sea lampreys?
Anadromous: migrates from salt water to spawn in fresh water
What did the Clean Water act call for?
Annual phosphorus discharges into Lake Erie to be cut in half
What are dead zones?
Areas that are so depleted of oxygen that no fish can survive
Originally, why were the Bighead and silver carp brought over to North America?
As part of a sewage treatment experiment.
Where are Lake Michigan and Huron connected?
At the Mackinac straight
Why did 5 states take the USACE and Illinois to court?
Because a bighead carp was caught beyond the barrier just miles from Lake Michigan.
Why is the Pacific Northwest vulnerable to mussel invasion?
Because hundreds of thousands of boats use the lakes and reservoirs there every year, it's impossible to guard every boat ramp, and no state or water body has been able to stop the mussel from invading
Why was the St. Lawrence Seaway considered obsolete when it opened in 1959?
Because it was designed for 1930s freighters
Why were invasive mussels able to take over Lake Mead's bed and canyon walls below the water line in only two years?
Because they were able to reproduce rapidly in the warm climate.
Before European settlement, what was the estimate for the number of native fish species in the Great Lakes?
Between 150 and 180
What is the Hypolimnion layer of the lakes
Deepest Layer
What makes a good invader?
Good disperser, lacks predators in new environments, fast reproducers, good competitors, and habitat generalists
What was the most serious problem affecting water quality in the Great Lakes?
Nutrient Loading
Where is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore located?
On the coast of Lake Michigan
Which lake is the 3rd, 4th, and 5th largest in the world by volume?
Superior, Michigan, and Huron
What is the epilimnion level of the lakes?
Surface level
What is the only hydrologic connection between the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes?
The Chicago Sanitary
What causes the currents in the lakes?
The Coriolis Effect
What is one of the hotspots for invasive carp that was highlighted in Silent Invaders?
The Illinois River
What was the first canal to bridge the Chicago Portage?
The Illinois and Michigan canal.
What people were in part responsible for the extermination of the mastodon and wooly mammoth?
The People of copper culture
What people began to dominate the Great Lakes about 3000 years ago?
The People of the woodland culture
What is the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes Basin separated by?
The St. Lawrence divide which stretches about 1500 miles from eastern Minnesota to western NY state
Because of the extensive grid of ditches and tile lines...
have increased flows in the fiver, made the river more turbid, and have increased nutrient inputs into the river.
What was the total cost of the St. Lawrence Seaway?
$500 million
When was the Illinois and Michigan canal completed and what did it do?
1822 and it transformed the economy by turning the midwest into an agricultural powerhouse
When was the St. Lawrence Seaway completed?
1959
What is the estimated damage to fisheries and recreational activities?
$200 million annually
For every 100 species introductions, how many on average become invasive?
1 species
In 1859, what law did the Ohio General Assembly pass?
A law authorized county commissioners to construct drainage ditches, with farmers sharing the cost
What is blue-green algae?
A primitive form of bacteria known as cyanobacteria packed with toxins
What were the Great Lakes once covered by over 14,000 years ago?
A sheet of ice called the Wisconsin Glacier
When did the last glacial peak?
About 2100 years ago
What cause a thiamine deficiency in the Lake Trout?
Alewives
What were deepwater forage species impacted by?
Alewives and polluted sediments
What fueled the nascent environmental movement and the Clean Water Act in 1972?
Algal blooms and Cuyahoga fire
What are recreational boating and tourism likely to be most affected by?
Algal blooms, low water, and higher water temperatures.
To help reduce a $25 million budged deficit, what did the city of Flint decide to do?
Build its own water pipeline and to temporarily get its water from the Flint River.
How can bighead and silver carp starve their competition?
By stripping away the plankton upon which every other fish species depends on
How is Ontario connected to Lake Erie?
By the Niagara River and Falls
What country is not supportive of efforts to close the Seaway to ocean-going freighters?
Canada
How large is the Mississippi River basin?
Covers about 40% of continental US
What main two things did the People of Copper culture accomplish?
Developed rudimentary agriculture and the birch bark canoe
Who pioneered the use of genetic-based testing to identify the presence of invasive species in ballast known as DNA barcoding and what was the goal?
Dr. John Lodge, goal is to identify a species, not an individual
When did the last ice age occur?
During the Pleistocene Epoch.
What are the three levels of the lakes?
Epilimnion, Metalimnion, and Hypolimnion.
Because of the invasive mussels, what is the estimation on how often Lake Michigan is filtered?
Every Two Weeks
True or False? The exorbitantly high cost of pumping water thousands of miles is the thing that prevents it from happening.
False
What, like ballast water, was largely excluded in the Clean Water Act?
Farm Water
How did the asian carp get released into the North American ecosystem?
Federal funding was halted for the carp-controlling-sewage experiment and Arkansas Game and Fish let some of them go.
What was a salient feature of the Pleistocene?
Glaciers
Eutrophic vs. Oligotrophic
High nutrient concentration vs. Low nutrient concentration
When and where was the sea lamprey first discovered?
In Lake Ontario in 1835
In the northern hemisphere, which way does the Coriolis effect affect currents?
In a clockwise direction
In the southern hemisphere, which way does the Coriolis effect affect currents?
In a counterclockwise direction
What is species richness?
Increase in number of species
What trends in the Great Lakes are attributed to climate change?
Increase in water temperature and increase in the number of heavy rainfall events
What defines a Sea?
It generally connects to the ocean
Why is the electric barrier outside of Chicago desirable?
It restricts movement of fish, but not water
What does the St. Lawrence divide do?
It separates the Great Lakes Basin from the Mississippi River Basin, generally more of a hill than a mountain, and runs through southern Canada and the western part of Chicago.
What was the St. Lawrence Seaway designed to do?
It was designed to blast a navigation channel through the shallow rapids to the St. Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal.
What was the 1996 electric barrier outside of Chicago intended for?
It was intended to be temporary and meant to prevent the takeover of Asian carp
Why were the Common Carp introduced to the lakes?
It was part of a national hatchery and stocking program by the US Fish Commission
What replaced the Illinois-Michigan Canal and what was the effect of this?
It was replaced by the larger Chicago Sanitary and it reversed the flow of the Chicago river sending waste south toward other communities
What effects did the Chicago Sanitary and Ship canal have?
It was the largest earth-moving project in North America at the time, helped sanitize water, and reversed the flow of the Chicago River.
What would the St. Lawrence Seaway allow?
It would allow giant freighters to navigate the Great Lakes creating "A North American Fourth Seacoast"
What lake was the most productive for inshore species?
Lake Erie
Which lake has the highest seiche fluctuations?
Lake Erie
Which lake is most know for storms?
Lake Erie
Which lake is the only lake that its coast is entirely in one country?
Lake Michigan
What is the largest lake by area?
Lake Superior
What lake was the least productive for inshore species?
Lake Superior
What is the Continental Divide of the Mississippi River Basin defined by?
Laurentian, St. Lawrence, Eastern, and Great continental divides
What are strategies for getting rid of carp?
Making fertilizer from them, making pet food from them, or making fish cakes from them.
What is the largest freshwater island in the world?
Manitoulin Island
What is the metalimnion level of the lakes?
Middle layer
What is the estimated impact of invasion by Asian carp in the Great Lakes?
Moderate to High in four of the five lakes
What is the sea lamprey
Murderer with absent gils and a shrives of vents that look like round indentations.
What are two features that had to be addressed to achieve connectivity for shipping across all five Lakes?
Niagara Falls and the falls of Saint Mary's.
What is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore classified as and how far inland is it moving each year?
Perch dune, 2 feet per year
What was the deadliest fire in US history and why?
Peshtigo Fire on October 8th, 1871 because it created a firestorm that killed an estimated 2500.
What is the limiting factor in eutrophication?
Phosphorus, which does not exist naturally in any environment.
What did the Clean Water Act Focus on?
Point-source pollution, ignoring non-point pollution
Why are lake levels not constant?
Precipitation and runoff
What created the Great Black swamp?
Receding water and ice in the bed of a glacial lake (Lake Maumee)
What are interstadials?
Relatively warm, ice-free periods followed by a glacial retreat.
What do excessive nutrient inputs result in?
Run-away algal growth
Because of the demise of the lake trout, what species became the top predator of the ecosystem?
Salmon
Which type of carp launch themselves through the air?
Silver carp
What is the first lock in the St. Lawrence Seaway and how much does it raise ships?
St. Lambert lock raises ships 15 feet
What is the Continental Divide of the Great Lakes Basin defined by?
St. Lawrence River and Laurentian continental divides
How was Huron historically connected to Superior?
St. Mary's River
What was a key point in controlling the lamprey?
St. Mary's River
What allowed the sea lamprey to travel from lake Ontario to lake Erie?
The Welland canal
What has the alewife caused annually and why?
The alewife presence in the lakes cause annually die-offs because they are not fully evolved to survive in the Great Lakes
What caused the decrease in the abundance of phytoplankton?
The introduction of an abundance of invasive mussels and their ability to filter water rapidly
Why did draining quicken in the 1880s?
The invention of the Buckeye Traction Ditcher which could dig a ditch faster than a team of 15 men
When did the People of Copper culture live in the Great Lakes region and for how long?
The lived there 7000 years ago for about 3000 years.
What is cultural eutrophication?
The over enrichment of a body of water resulting form excessive additions of chemical nutrients due to human activity.
Who arrived the the Great Lakes region after the Wisconsin Glacier melted (about 14,000 years ago)?
The paleo native indians
Historical racism was reported to contribute to the use of Flint River water for drinking because...
The residents were mostly poor and African American, the residents were not viewed as credible, and the complaints of the residents were not taken seriously.
What is Thermal Stratification?
The water at the bottom of a lake is warmer than the top.
Why are carp migrating north toward the Great Lakes?
They are cold water-seeking fish
What do bighead and silver carp both do?
They are filter feeders that eat plankton and other floating nutrients
Why are Tardigras insane?
They can survive almost anything including the vacuum of space
What have phytoplankton increased and decreased in?
They have increased in terms of number of species, but decreased in overall abundance
What are the Carp's downfalls?
They ripped up vegetation while searching for food which increased turbidity
What happens when algal cells die off?
They sink to the bottom where microbes aid in decomposition which uses immense quantities of oxygen in the process which creates dead zones.
What are wetlands good for?
They slow water down, filter water, intercept sub-surface flows, and provide wildlife habitat
What were some of the quick adaptations that whitefish did after the introduction of invasive mussels?
They started eating the mussels, their rigged rib became visible even though it did not exist before, their stomachs were full of mussel paste, they increasingly ate round gobies, and were found in newer places
Why was the Welland Canal constructed?
To circumvent Niagara Falls, to enable Canada to compete with the Erie Canal, and to enable ships rather than barges to reach the Great Lakes.
What was the primary mission of the early French explorers of the Great Lakes?
To find a passage to the Great South Sea and Cathay
What is a cheaper and more effective solution than installing ballast systems on all foreign freighters?
Transferring the cargo from foreign freighters to trucks, rail, or lake freighters.
What two factors are important for water quality?
Turnover and layering
What are other oceanic features that lakes have?
Upwelling and sinking of water
What are veligers and how fast can they travel?
Veligers are freshly hatched microscopic mussels that were flooding down the Illinois river at a rate of 70 million per second
What is wind set-up?
Winds that push waters onshore
What wiped out the whitefish's food source?
Zebra and Quagga mussels
What is a continental divide?
a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or not connected to the open sea.
What is a seiche?
an extreme form of wind set-up and occurs with rapid changes in wind and barometric pressure.
When general John Peabody took charge of the situation for USACE, he...
closed the locks until he was sure the barriers worked, turned on the barriers, and kept the voltage to 1/4 capacity.
The same process causing massive algal blooms in Lake Erie has resulted in...
dead zones around the world and has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico
What is eutrophication?
the process by which a body of water becomes enriched in dissolved nutrients (as phosphates) that stimulate the growth of aquatic plant life usually resulting in the depletion of dissolved oxygen