Notice

The information in this browser has been funded wholly by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It has been subjected to the Agency's peer and administrative review has been approved for publication as an EPA document. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by EPA for use. If you have comments or concerns regarding this research contact Ricardo D. Lopez.

The principal focus of this project is the mapping and interpretation of landscape scale (i.e., broad scale) ecological metrics among hydrologic units and within 1 km, 5 km, and 10 km regions of coastal land in the Great Lakes Basin (GLB). Much is still unknown about the ecological relationships between human activities, surface water quality, and the biological characteristics within the GLB. This browser is an important step toward understanding the distribution of these phenomena and the analyses of their interrelationships.

The browser is designed to present some key ecological metrics to the GLB public and research communities at a landscape scale and will be updated as additional analyses are completed. For additional information regarding the topic of landscape ecology, visit the following web site: https://www.epa.gov/nerlesd1/land-sci/intro.htm.

Because of the vast areas involved in an ecological assessment of the entire GLB we used remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques to measure the potential for ecological disturbance in the region. The EPA's efforts to assess landscape scale disturbances in the GLB (United States and Canada) uses multispectral satellite data processing, spatial data set merging, and GIS modeling to produce maps of the GLB landscape ecology metrics. Use the menus provided in this browser to select the metrics that are of interest to you.

Notice

Local Navigation