wave action

Lack of ice on Great Lakes and rivers is helpful to shipping but may have environmental impacts

Lack of ice on Great Lakes and rivers is helpful to shipping but may have environmental impacts

A mild winter has meant not very much ice has formed on the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair. "This year is an extraordinary year," said Steve Salmons, president and CEO of the Windsor Port Authority. Salmons says the lack of ice means ships have easier time of navigating but it doesn't mean a higher volume of goods moves because most ships are taken out of service for winter maintenance and the locks close seasonally anyway.

Predicting and alerting for coastal flooding

Predicting and alerting for coastal flooding

In response to increasing coastal flooding risks, the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), a branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), recently launched a five-year initiative entitled the Predicting and Alerting for Coastal Flooding (PACF) project. To help advance this work, ECCC is seeking Geographic Information System (GIS) data from municipalities and regional districts that pertains to near-ocean infrastructure.

'A new normal': decreasing ice cover on the Great Lakes

'A new normal': decreasing ice cover on the Great Lakes

The changes caused by declining ice cover on the Great Lakes are pretty bad, but it's not all doom and gloom. Ice cover on the Great Lakes has declined in the past 40 years with average ice coverage dropping up to 75 per cent, depending on the lake. "We rely a lot on the Great Lakes for shipping ... so an ice-free Great Lake is not a barrier to shipping. But beyond that there are a lot of negatives associated," said Mike McKay, the executive director for the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER), based at the University of Windsor.