NCCA assessment approach on the St. Lawrence River to increase Regional and States’ capacity to manage large connecting river systems in the Great Lakes Dataset
The St. Lawrence River ROAR project was developed to generate and test a probability-based assessment and monitoring approach for the St. Lawrence River. Previous work by the EPA Office of Research and Development on the Great Lakes' connecting river systems showed probability-based approaches to be cost-effective for assessing water quality and biological conditions, with similar approaches in large rivers in the nearshore Great Lakes yielding comparable data across resources. This was conducted in an effort to address two priority science needs for EPA Region 2, including datasets and methods to evaluate condition classes for nutrient concentration thresholds and benthic community indicators, and improving the ability to communicate these conditions to the public. This approach for monitoring and assessing environmental conditions can improve the ability of the Region to communicate to the public the successes and remaining challenges of remediation, restoration, and conservation work on the river, resulting in a system-based perspective of conditions to complement project-based results. Monitoring efforts in September of 2024 resulted in comprehensive datasets addressing water chemistry, contaminant, and benthic macroinvertebrate communities. These datasets will be evaluated according to nutrient concentration thresholds and benthic community indicators to differentiate condition classes to ensure assessment outcomes are management relevant.
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