Coastal margins of the Great Lakes are experiencing degraded beaches, changes in aquatic community structure, and increased nuisance and harmful algal blooms, ostensibly because of increases in the quantity or reactivity of landscape-derived nutrients. Increasing public concern and demands for action to address these highly visible changes is likely to stimulate the development of land-based demonstration projects to determine how best to mitigate some of these effects.

Aquatic habitat characteristics are maintained by dynamic interactions among environmental, hydrological, geological, and biological features. Strategies for long-term habitat protection and restoration depend on our understanding these dynamics as well as characterizing the habitats themselves.

The IJC Council of Great Lakes Research Managers is convening this workshop to build a generic framework detailing how one would assess the relative impacts of watershed practices and the effectiveness of land use mitigation strategies on Great Lakes coastal margin characteristics.

Guiding Questions:

• What model and data inputs are needed to summarize the delivery of materials (nutrients, biological and chemical contaminants, sediments, hydrological pulses) to the coastal margin?
   
• What key indicators of biological condition can be used to characterize coastal margins/nearshore zones?
   
• What is the relative impact of watershed loadings of important stressors to the indicators of nearshore conditions?
   
• What are the target and actionable levels of these variables at coastal margins?
   
• What is a desirable effect size? What is the inherent variability and expected response time of these variables?
   
• What intensity (spatial density, frequency) of monitoring would be necessary before, during and following intervention to assess the effectiveness of a project during an intensive sampling year?
   
• What is an appropriate frame of reference against which to evaluate effectiveness of a project?