The Great Lakes Science Center is a museum and educational facility in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States.Many of the exhibits document the features of the natural environment in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The facility includes signature (permanent) and traveling exhibits, meeting space, a cafe, and an IMAX Dome theater.Great Lakes Science Center is funded by the citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, grants, funds, and corporate and individual gifts.The museum opened in July 1996. The center's exhibits support STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) with exhibits including the BioMedTech Gallery, advanced energy, science phenomena and space. The Science Center is home to the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, one of only 11 such Visitor Centers in the country. Also, Science Center staff conduct daily science demonstrations.Throughout the school year, the Science Center provides STEM education to field trip students each year with programs and exhibits supporting classroom curriculum by meeting Ohio Revised Standards in Science. It also provides educator professional development programming. Homeschool workshops and programs are offered October through February. During the summer, the Science Center offers educational and fun camps for preschoolers through 12th graders that occur in various locations throughout Northeast Ohio. Year round, the Science Center provides classes, workshops, sleepovers and scout programs, as well as seasonal events for families, kids and adults.The Science Center installed a wind turbine in its front yard in summer 2006. The wind turbine provides approximately 7% of the Science Center's annual electrical needs. A year later, it completed the installation of a 300-foot solar array canopy featuring 156 photovoltaic panels that provide enough power to light all of the Science Center's 65,000 square feet of exhibition space for one hour. During the course of a year, the solar array produces an average of 100 kWh per day, the equivalent of the average electrical usage of four homes. The Science Center also offers alternative energy exhibitions for guests to interact with a touch-screen kiosk displaying both real-time and historical data.The Great Lakes Science Center is located between FirstEnergy Stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at North Coast Harbor on the shore of Lake Erie. Discounted parking is available for guests in the attached 500-car garage.
Increasing application of acoustic telemetry for determining survival, migration and habitat use of fishes highlights the need to improve interpretation of tracks that end abruptly: when is fishing mortality, predation, or some other cause to be inferred? Significant technological advances have led to the development of tags that “sense” predation and can be used to infer information about the type of predator that consumed the tagged fish. However, growing evidence suggests that bird predation is not effectively quantified by the technology. We hypothesized that reduction in sound transmission from acoustic tags in the gut of a bird combined with short bird diving intervals would eliminate detections of acoustic telemetry tags from the surface and severely reduce detection efficiency at depth. We test this hypothesis indirectly with two experiments using cormorant carcasses containing tagged fish in which carcasses were either tethered to a mooring for several hours or lowered through the water to simulate diving behavior. Detection of tagged prey fish in the gut of bird carcasses was severely reduced or negated completely, supporting our hypothesis. By comparison, as expected, tagged fish that were not in the gut of bird carcasses were detected at a higher frequency. Depth and distance to passive moored receivers also affected detection probability of tagged fish with more detections at depth and when closer to the receiver. Our results emphasized the importance of accounting for avian predation of tagged fish in studies of prey species in surface waters. Further, while recent development of predation sensing tags has illustrated a few examples of bird predation, our results demonstrate that determining that a tagged fish has been consumed by a diving bird will be difficult and will likely require alternative methods or technologies.
Reservoir morphology influences a waterbody's response to temperature and corresponding effects on stratification, water quality, and ecosystem health. Because local reservoirs may respond differently to the same climate forcing, understanding shape-driven influences is critical to optimised reservoir management, particularly under future climate scenarios. For this study, 5 archetypical hypothetical reservoir morphologies (shapes) were created based on constant surface area and maximum depth from a previously modelled polymictic reservoir, Blagdon Lake in southwest England, to establish how bathymetry alters stratification regimes. The shapes were modelled with the Aquatic Ecosystem Model 3D (AEM3D) and then forced with multiple future climate scenarios based on UK Climate Projections (UKCP18). Two stratification predictors, lake geometry ratio (GR) and Osgood index (OI), were used to characterise stratification in the differently shaped reservoirs. Model results show that all reservoirs stratified with similar thermocline depths during simulated summers, with some variations in water-column stability and hypolimnion volume. Morphologies with larger OI values tended to have increased strength, areal extent, and duration of stratification. Results highlight the importance of taking reservoir shape into account when planning management strategies and optimising reservoir design under future climates.
Habitat fragmentation poses a significant threat to migratory species. Dams are a common form of fragmentation, and recent restoration efforts around the Great Lakes have prioritized dam removal. We used acoustic telemetry to describe migratory movements of two redhorse species in the Sandusky and Cuyahoga rivers, Ohio, USA in relationship to habitat reconnection. Shorthead redhorse (Moxostoma macrolepidotum) typically migrated from both rivers into Lake Erie between May and July, moving 40-248 km straight-line distance from the river before returning the following spring. We recorded individual cumulative distances up to 809 km between spawning seasons. Shorthead redhorse demonstrated tributary fidelity, but individuals from both rivers co-occurred along southern Lake Erie. Silver redhorse (M. anisurum) largely remained in their tagging tributary watersheds year-round. Cuyahoga River silver redhorse moved upstream from March to April 28.8 km on average and passed upstream of the historical Brecksville Dam (removed in 2020), occasionally reaching the next upstream dam. Telemetry data revealed redhorse use of newly available habitat upstream of dam removals and previously undescribed long-range adfluvial migration by shorthead redhorse.
Incorporation of autonomous uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) into large-scale acoustic surveys may enhance spatiotemporal extent and quality of fish density estimates. Lake Erie is currently surveyed by three motorized research vessels (RVs), which annually collect acoustic data and estimate prey-fish abundances. To evaluate the feasibility of incorporating a USV into the existing survey to increase spatial coverage, we compared paired acoustic measurements of target strength (TS), area backscattering coefficient (ABC), and areal fish density from four motorized RVs (three currently and one historically used) and one USV (Saildrone Explorer). Acoustic data were collected along 2-km transects during five sampling events distributed throughout Lake Erie. Despite observing event-specific differences that were likely impacted by sampling conditions, survey-level estimates areal density between RVs and the USV were comparable (i.e., RV 6% lower than USV). RVs and the USV appear to react differently (speed and stability) to variable environmental conditions (wind and waves), which impacted data quality and must be mitigated in future applications. However, similar to previous comparisons in marine and freshwater environments, incorporating a USV into an acoustic survey could enhance annual fish density estimates by increasing effort, spatial coverage, logistical flexibility, and biological data collection opportunities from RVs.
Impacts of dreissenid mussels (Dreissena spp.) on Great Lakes ecosystems are well documented, but the mechanisms driving variation in their abundance remain poorly understood. Dreissenid mussels have been incorporated into fish diets throughout the Great Lakes; however, studies quantifying the amount of dreissenid mussels consumed by fish predators are limited. To date, attention has mainly focused on invasive round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) predation of dreissenid mussels. Biomass of native molluscivores, namely the freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens), may exceed round goby biomass by an order of magnitude in some areas. Thus, the role of predation on dreissenid mussel population dynamics may be greater than currently assumed. Here, we combine estimates of diet composition and fish biomass to estimate kg/ha of dreissenid mussels consumed by freshwater drum in the West Basin of Lake Erie. Annual consumption estimates of dreissenids by freshwater drum were large (averaging 23.79 kg/ha shell-free mass), and generally exceeded existing dreissenid consumption estimates for round goby. Our results support evaluation of ecological mechanisms, such as predation, to improve our knowledge of factors that may influence dreissenid mussel abundance.
