National Geographic USA 12.2020

LAKE MICHIGAN

Steel production once
boomed in Whiting
and Gary, Indiana, and
all along the southern
edge of Lake Michigan.
Since 2000, Gary has
seen tens of thousands
of residents leave as
overseas competition
and the U.S. shift away
from heavy manu-
facturing gutted the
area’s economy.

PANORAMA COMPOSED OF SIX IMAGES

GREAT LAKES LAKE SUPERIOR The
IN PERIL at ri
Waning ice, warming waters Lake N
One of the world’s largest sources of surface freshwater Nipigon
is in trouble. Environmental stressors such as climate With lightly populated shores, the A
change, invasive species, toxic chemicals, agricultural lake experiences relatively low Red Rock C
pollutants, and coastal development are degrading the
Great Lakes ecosystem. Lake Superior is the least threat- stress, but shrinking ice cover and Heron Bay
ened; Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan are most at risk. higher water temperatures are a
Black Bay Pen.
major concern for sensitive aquatic Thunder Bay
species and winter tourism.
581,000 people; 2.5 billion LAKE SUPERIO R
gallons used per day
Whitef
U.CSA. N.

Isle
Royale

BASIN
LAKE
S U Michipicoten I.
PERIO
LAKE SUPEAIsRplaonIsdtOlseR enaw Pen. R
Keweenaw Shipping lane
GREAT Kewe Bay

CANADA LAKES

MISSISSIPPI BASIN Duluth

RIVER BASIN LANTN IC Superior
OCEA
NORTH UNITED A T Marquette
AMERICA S TAT E S

M I N N E S O TA LAKE MICHIGAN M I C H. PENINSU

Dangerously clear water UPPER Straits o
Escanaba Mackina
Its water is increasingly clear
because invasive mussels Beaver I.
filter phytoplankton; that
Infrastructure Stress on the lakes doesn’t mean the water is G
DoorrPeeniensnula B a y
Limited-access highway from human factors St. Paul healthy. Without plankton,
Main road Minneapolis many species have suffered.
Railroad Lowest Highest Marinette
Navigable canal 13.3 million people;
Great Lake basin boundary 10.8 billion gallons used Gra
Trav
50 mi per day Bay
50 km
WISCONSIN Traverse

Mississip pi LAKE MICHIGAN

Green
Bay

•Salt water Appleton BASIN
97.5%
Freshwater 2.5% Lake LAKE MICHIGAN
Winnebago

Groundwater 30.1% Sheboygan ego n
Fond LOW
du Lac

I IPermafrost 0.8% I OWA Musk M
• Surface and
Glaciers atmospheric Freshwater lakes 67.4% Muskegon
68.7% water 0.4% GREAT LAKES 21%
Milwaukee Grand
Racine Rapids

Holland

Shipping
lane

Kalamazoo

Massive freshwater reserve Biomass 0.8% Chicago St. Joseph Elkhart
Rivers 1.6% Sanitary and
Holding nearly 5,500 cubic miles of water, the Great Wetlands 8.5% Chicago
Atmosphere 9.5% Ship Canal To Gulf of Mexico
Lakes contain more than a fifth of all the surface fresh- Soil moisture 12.2% 1,525 miles
Calumet-Sag
water on Earth. Almost 40 million people in the U.S. Channel Gary South
Bend
and Canada rely on these five lakes for drinking water. ILLINOIS

INDIANA

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, JASON TREAT, AND ROSEMARY WARDLEY, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI
SOURCES: GREAT LAKES ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND MAPPING PROJECT; STATISTICS CANADA; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU;
GREAT LAKES COMMISSION; U.S. EPA; NOAA; USGS; GREEN MARBLE; DAVID ALLAN AND OTHERS, PNAS, JANUARY 2013

Lake Superior Lake Superior Lake Superior

eir future is Highest Lake Huron Highest Lake Huron Highest Lake Huron
isk from: Lake Lake Lake
Stress Stress Stress
Wawa from Ontario from Ontario from Ontario
pollution warming invasive
waters species

Lowest Lake Lake Erie Lowest Lake Lake Erie Lowest Lake Lake Erie
Michigan Michigan Michigan

Pollution Warmer waters Invasive species St. Lawrence

D Agricultural runoff from extensive fertilizer As waters heat up, they stress the native flora Interlopers foreign to the lakes have upended
A use and overflowing sewers creates an over- and fauna that are adapted to the normal lake the food web—to the detriment of native species.
abundance of nutrients in the lakes. This leads temperature cycle. Warming also reduces the Many arrived in the ballast tanks of freighters;
to toxic algal blooms that rob the waters of number of days that the lakes are ice-covered. some were introduced for sportfishing.
life-sustaining oxygen.

QUÉBEC Québec

I LAKE HURON Opening to the ocean
Plummeting fish stock

A Like its neighbor Superior, Canals were cut through nat-

Huron has relatively undevel- ural barriers, connecting the

oped shores. Invasive mussels lakes to the Mississippi River

fis N and a period of salmon over- system and easing access to

h BayULA Sault Greater Sudbury stocking led to longer-term the Atlantic Ocean. But this
of Ste. Marie declines in baitfish and also exposed the lakes to
c
salmon populations. non-native species.
and
verse Sault Blind S Lake 3.1 million people; 8.3 billion Montréal South Shore Canal
City Ste. Marie River Nipissing gallons used per day
North Channel H
BAS N N TA R I O Beauharnois Canal UNICTAENDASDTAATES
Co Manitoulin I. N Georgian I IO Ottawa
Drummond ELD
ckburn I. Bay ence Wiley-Dondero Lake

I. LAKE St. Lawr Canal Champlain

O Iroquois Montpelier
R Canal
U aBgaay
Alpena H Nottawas To Gulf of St. Lawrence VERMONT N.H.
Bruce Peninsula Collingwood 800 miles
P ENINSULA E Midland Kingston
K HUUNCITRAENDOASDNTAATES Adirondack
A Lake Peterborough Mountains
Simcoe
Barrie
L Concord

Bay LAKE ONTARIO BASIN NEW YORK Champlain

Saginaw Oshawa Canal
To New York City
Toronto LAKE O N TA R I O Oswego Oneida 134 miles
Lake
Bay Cit Guelph Oswego Canal Erie Cana
Midland Kitchener Syracuse
y Erie Canal Rochester Hudson
Niagara l
Saginaw Hamilton River Albany
MASS.
ICHIGAN Welland Canal Cayuga-Seneca s
(St. Lawrence Seaway) Niagara Falls Canal Lake
WER Buffalo Finger LAKE ONTARIO Springfield

Port Sarnia London Urban pollution threat R.I.
Huron Thames
Flint Detro N Development, pollution from
St. Clair
Lansing I stormwater and sewage, and Hartford
S Long Point
A electricity generation contribute
Battle Detroit Lake Chatham B to high stress levels. Power CONN.
Creek it St. Clair E
KE I E Erie plants that use lake water for
Jackson R
Ann Windsor IE LAKE ERIE cooling kill many larval fish. Long I. Sound
Arbor 10.2 million people;
R A Too many nutrients 10.3 billion gallons used per day
E L
Adrian As the shallowest of the five lakes,
Erie has a substantial number of Long Island
Toledo AKE Cleveland stressors, including a high coastal Newark New York
population density and elevated
L Sandusky pollution levels. Agricultural runoff

Maumee Bowling Sandusky Akron Youngstown causes dangerous algal blooms. P E N N S Y LVA N I A
Green
12.2 million people; Harrisburg
Fort Wayne Findlay 6.9 billion gallons used per day

OHIO Canton NEW ATLANTIC
JERSEY OCEAN
Lima

Pittsburgh Philadelphia

ICE-CARVED TREASURES

The Great Lakes formed when deeply grooved valleys—gouged by
the advance and retreat of glaciers over thousands of years—filled with
meltwater at the end of the last ice age.

LAURENTIDE ICE SHEET

MINN. 10,L0im00ityoefaircseago QUÉBEC
Superior Lobe

MICH. CANADA

WISCONSIN ONTARIO

LGorbeeen Bay Michigan Lake SuSblaogibenaw Huron Lobe O n1t3,aL0ir0mi0oityoeLfaoircbseeag
Saginaw
Lake extent NEW o
13,000 years ago MICHIGAN YORK
Lake
Lake Lobe
Chicago
PA. 100 mi
ILLINOIS Lake Maumee 100 km

INDIANA OHIO

UNITED STATES

From high basin to sea

MINN. Lake Superior Superior’s maximum depth of 1,333 feet contrasts
with shallower Erie, at only 210. Water entering from
•Duluth ONT. the northwest eventually reaches the Atlantic, flowing
over Niagara Falls out through the St. Lawrence River.
MICH.
St. Lawren ce

ONTARIO QUÉBEC

CANADA •Montréal

WISCONSIN Lake •Kingston Depth
Huron 00
Lake Lake 330 100
Michigan MICHIGAN Niagara Ontario feet660 200
Falls meters980 300
ILLINOIS •Port Huron NEW 1,310 400
PA. Buffalo YORK 1,640 500
•Detroit
Lake Erie UNITED

S TAT E S

INDIANA OHIO

Detroit, Port Huron, LAKE MICHIGAN
•Duluth, Minnesota The GreiantpLraokfieles•MichiganBuffalo,
•Michigan As the sun sets, a cur-
601 t •New York tain of rain descends
feet Niagara from storm clouds near
above Soo . . II.sealevel Kingston, Sleeping Bear Dunes
sea Locks ERIE Falls Ontario National Lakeshore
level on the northeastern
HURON -210 Montréal, coast of Lake Michigan.
-750 Québec Of the five Great Lakes,
243 feet above only Lake Michigan
SUPERIOR lies entirely within
-1,333 feet deep SEA LEVEL the United States.

MICHIGAN Beauharnois
-923 Generating Station

Moses-Saunders
Power Dam

ONTARIO Iroquois Dam
-802



‘IT’S BIG, WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE ...
YOU KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG.

liver. But now we don’t eat that anymore.” Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario—are argu-
Borg suspects that the spraying of herbicides ably the continent’s most precious resource,
incalculably more valuable than oil, gas, or
by timber companies is hurting the animals in coal. Together they hold more than a fifth of
Lake Nipigon’s watershed. “New shoots are the the world’s surface freshwater—six quadrillion
moose’s favorite food,” he said. “They thrive on gallons—and 84 percent of North America’s.
that new growth.” Or they did until it was poi-
soned. “That’s the way it works. Herbicides flow Almost 40 million Americans and Canadians
into streams to beaver lodges—that’s why their live in the Great Lakes watershed. We drink from
innards are so messed up. the lakes, fish on them, transport goods over
them, farm their shores, and work in cities that
“When I see harm and disruption, it hurts a wouldn’t exist without the lakes. And of course,
lot. And the changes I’ve seen in the bush over we pollute them. We’ve introduced invasive spe-
the last 15 years—I didn’t think changes could cies that have permanently altered the lakes.
come that fast,” Borg said as he finished the The fertilizers we use to grow the corn we feed
story on a cool summer evening at his home to the animals we eat and to make the biofuels
in Nipigon. we pump into our vehicles have contributed to
the resurgence of algal blooms so large they can
Borg has graying black hair and is trimly built, be seen from space. And with our ongoing emis-
fit from a lifetime of hard work maintaining gas sion of greenhouse gases, we’ve even managed to
pipelines while trapping on the side. In the dis- reengineer the weather over vast stretches of the
tance an occasional truck rumbled along the Great Lakes watershed, increasing the frequency
Trans-Canada Highway. From somewhere out in of severe storms.
the night came the hauntingly wild cry of a loon.
“It’s big, what’s happening here,” Borg said
Borg’s home, which he built with his wife over tea. “When you spend time on the land, you
and two sons among tall conifers 33 years ago, know something is wrong. Things are changing.
overlooks the Nipigon River, an outflow from I don’t know if we can stop it.”
the lake of the same name. Lake Nipigon cov-
ers nearly 1,900 square miles, but on a map it A S G I G A N T I C G E O G R A P H I C A L features go, the
looks pondlike compared with the body of water Great Lakes are newcomers on the continent.
it drains into: Lake Superior, the largest of the They’re a legacy of North America’s last ice
five Great Lakes, or as the Anishinaabe call it, age, when miles-thick glaciers stretched from
Anishinaabewi-gichigami—the Anishinaabe’s southern Kansas to the Arctic. When the gla-
Great Lake. (In Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, ciers retreated 11,000 years ago, they gouged the
it’s Gitche Gumee, “the shining Big-Sea-Water.”) basins that became the Great Lakes. It was only
about 3,000 years ago, though, that the lakes’
As Borg’s wife, Donna, served us thick slices current contours and drainage systems evolved,
of bannock with rose hip jam, he lamented the which makes them significantly younger than
transformation of a land he loves. Even the the oldest Egyptian pyramids. Nothing on Earth
seasons have changed. Sometimes the lakes rivals the lakes—they’re the world’s largest fresh-
still have open water in December; winds are water system, a gift from one age on the cusp of
more violent; the winter coats of the animals he momentous change to another. They’re con-
traps—beavers, marten, mink, weasels—develop nected; one flows into the next.
later in the season than they did when he was a
boy. “It’s not the same anymore.” All the lakes, whether they’re cold and deep
with wooded shores, like Lake Superior, or warm
The sorts of changes Borg has seen—and many and shallow and ringed by industrial cities, like
that he has not yet witnessed in his relatively pris-
tine watershed—are transforming the rest of the
Great Lake watersheds. The five lakes—Superior,

56 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Lake Erie, share a secret life. They’re hosts to floes into open patches of water, he told me,
a hidden world that most of us will never see. cheerfully. And, lucky me, the next frigid bap-
You might, if you’re lucky, glimpse a wolf on tism would be before dawn in four days. In a cra-
Isle Royale in Lake Superior; or catch a moose ven attempt to opt out, I mumbled that I hadn’t
at dusk near the shore of Lake Huron; or maybe packed a bathing suit. Bramburger cut me off:
you’ll reel in a 200-pound sturgeon in Lake “You can borrow one of mine.”
Erie. But those marquee creatures overshadow
a much humbler supporting cast, without which While I silently fretted about what I had got-
the lakes would die. ten myself into, Bramburger opened his laptop
to show me images of some of Lake Superior’s
“Take a deep breath, and then take a second smallest inhabitants. Researchers have identi-
deep breath. One of those two breaths was made fied about 3,000 species of diatoms in the Great
by diatoms,” said Andrew Bramburger, a lake Lakes, and there are probably many more to be
ecologist now with Environment and Climate discovered. Seen under a microscope, they’re
Change Canada, the agency that administers among the most strangely beautiful of all liv-
and enforces much of the country’s environ- ing things, with a kaleidoscopic variety of
mental policies. Last year he was still at the shapes—rococo orbs, striated lozenges, splayed
University of Minnesota Duluth, and on a rainy fans, disks patterned like the rose windows in
September afternoon in an empty classroom, a Gothic cathedral. Like plants, diatoms and
he was extolling the life-sustaining role played other algae use light to convert water and car-
by diatoms, a type of algae with rigid cell walls bon dioxide into simple carbohydrates. They’re
made of silica. high-quality food for zooplankton—minute,
floating grazers—“juicy and rich in fats,” in
“Everyone calls the Amazon rainforest the Bramburger’s description.
lungs of the world,” he said. “But it’s actually
the diatoms in the oceans, rivers, and lakes of Bramburger and other researchers have
the world that make about half the oxygen in charted an alarming trend stretching back 115
our atmosphere.” Diatoms pump oxygen into years: Individual diatoms in the Great Lakes are
the lakes as well—without them, the lakes would getting smaller. The shrinkage seems to be con-
suffocate. And they’re the lakes’ primary food nected with climate change. As the lakes warm,
source. If the diatoms are healthy, everything the diatoms sink, which reduces their ability to
else in the lakes will be too. harvest light. “The bigger ones can’t stay afloat,”
Bramburger said. “The trend is smaller diatoms
Bramburger, who is sandy-haired and and less of them, and they’re being replaced by
bearded, has spent 20 years studying algae in things that are at best low-quality food items and
the Great Lakes and other large lakes around the at worst toxic. We don’t know what that’s going
world. He grew up near Niagara Falls and could to do to the overall food web.”
be classified as an aquatic mammal himself. “I
love to be in water,” he said. “I learned to surf Invasive species of mussels, introduced by
on Lake Erie. When you tell people you surf on oceangoing vessels, present an even greater
a lake, they look at you kind of strangely.” Then threat to diatoms, causing their numbers in Lake
again, in most parts of the world, a lake is some- Erie to plunge 90 percent in the past 35 years.
thing you can see across. Bramburger’s enthusi- The equivalent loss of other keystone plants
asm for the lakes was such that he couldn’t help with higher profiles—the grasses of the African
but share it, and not just verbally. He invited me savanna, say—would make global headlines. But
to a special monthly event: a swim in Lake Supe- diatoms don’t get much press.
rior with some friends. They do it year-round,
even in the winter, when they’ll jump from ice For such an abundant and irreplaceable
organism, surprisingly little is known about

THINGS ARE CHANGING.
I DON’T KNOW IF WE CAN STOP IT.’

—TOM MO RRI SE AU BO RG, TRAD IT IO NA L TRA P P ER

FARMING’S IMPACT Lake
Nipigon
Freshwater is vital to the Great Lakes Basin agricultural industry,
which pumps some 400 million gallons of basin water every day Thunder ..
for irrigation. The region supports 25 percent of Canada’s agri- Bay
cultural production and 7 percent of the United States’, but water
quality, wildlife habitat, and fish stocks have decreased in recent
decades as a result of high fertilizer use and other pressures.

Total cropland LAKE SUPERIOR SUTACNTAITENESADDA
BASIN
UNITED STATES LAKE SUPERIOR
396.4 million acres M I N N E S O TA
CANADA
93.4 Total cropland in the Duluth
million acres Great Lakes basins

Intensive 28.2 million acres
monocropping…
MICH.
Growing one crop on the
same land each year is Total cropland for corn Superior Basin
common. Row crops such
as corn, soybeans, and hay 8.6 million acres U.S. CAN.
dominate the southern
Great Lakes region. Total cropland for soybeans '• 9,450; 1,800
3,330; 475
8.8 million acres

…requires a lot Total cropland treated LAKE
of fertilizer… with commercial fertilizer, MICHIGAN
lime, and soil conditioners
The longer a piece of land BASIN
is used for a single crop, 19.7 million acres
the more fertilizers are WISCONSIN
needed to replenish soil Total cropland
nutrients that can’t regen- treated with manure Green Bay
erate naturally. Appleton
4.4 million acres
LAKE
MICHIGAN

Michigan Basin Milwaukee

'•Corn 2,661,780

Soybeans 1,855,130
acres of
each crop

Nitrogen Phosphorus • ILLINOIS

Algae Chicago

…which leads to Oxygen
massive algal blooms.

Fertilizer nutrients such as
nitrogen and phosphorus
drain into the tributaries
that feed the lakes,
causing a range of
adverse impacts.

Fertilizer and manure, rich Algae feast on the excess The dead plants and algae
in nitrogen and phospho- nutrients, resulting in mas- decompose; bacteria fur-
rus that are not taken up sive blooms that absorb ther rob the system of oxy-
by crops, enter tributaries sunlight and oxygen, suffo- gen as they break down
and eventually the lakes. cating plants and animals. the organic material.

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK AND JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI
SOURCES: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD CANADA;
NASA; USGS; U.S. EPA; NOAA; USGS UPPER MIDWEST WATER SCIENCE CENTER

Land cover Total phosphorus Lake Superior Lake Ontario
concentration
D Cropland Phosphorus load
0 Grassland High Each square represents
50 metric tons per year
Scrubland Lake Huron
Forest Upstream lakes
Low
• Wetland • Atmosphere
50 mi
•• Urban area 50 km • Forest, wetland,

Lake • and scrubland
Michigan Farm fertilizer

Huron Basin Lake • Other agriculture
Erie
U.S. CAN. LAKE HURON Manure
BASIN
728,060; 643,710 • Urban runoff
789,310; 681,730 • Wastewater
• treatment
O N TA R I O
plant discharge

Sault Ste. Marie Greater A glut of nutrients
Sudbury
Natural processes, fertilizer
runoff, and sewage-treatment
wastewater supply an over-
abundance of phosphorus and
nitrogen to the lakes, leading
to toxic algal blooms.

LAKE St. Lawrence
H

U R O NUNCITAENDASDTAATES Toronto LAKE
ONTARIO

Rochester Syracuse

Hamilton

MICHIGAN Buffalo NEW YORK

Grand Rapids Flint LAKE ONTARIO
BASIN
Lansing Lake
St. Clair Ontario Basin

Detroit E R I E Erie Erie Basin U.S. CAN.
Windsor LAKE
U.S. CAN. 552,040; 282,500
Toledo PA.
1,981,200; 1,139,150 •232,590; 374,420
Cleveland
2,800,020; 1,227,960

INDIANA GreatHBislatocrkicSwamp Algal blooms

Fort Wayne Lake Erie’s algal blooms have worsened over the past
decade. Viewable from space, the blue-green, nutrient-
OHIO loaded water persists for weeks, threatening human

LAKE ERIE health, drinking water, and wildlife.
BASIN

Great Black Swamp 12 Western Lake Erie •• •
algal bloom severity
This 1,500-square-mile ••
marsh once served as a 9 •
natural sink for excess nutri-
ents. It was mostly drained Algal bloom 6
by 1900 so that settlers severity above
3 is harmful for • •
3•
water quality.
0 ~------~~·~·~--._--~-------------­
could farm its fertile soils. 2002 2005 2010 2015 2019

LAKE HURON

A 32-row planter
spreads bean seeds
on a portion of Zwerk
and Sons’ 7,500-acre
farm in Vassar, Michi-
gan, near Lake Huron.
More than 5,000 farms
in Michigan have been
certified through a
voluntary program
boosted by state and
local agencies to pro-
mote practices that
reduce pollution.



DULUTH, MINNESOTA, THE SECOND and attachment to the lake that Dulut
LARGEST CITY ON LAKE SUPERIOR, never seen on another town on the la

what happens to diatoms in the winter. “Five nuked and bleached,” Bramburger said. For all its beauty, Lake Superior can
months of the year the lake is covered with ice,” It was a worrisome find. “This is something erous. Duluth, with 86,000 people,
Bramburger said, “and we haven’t got the foggi- ond largest city on Superior, after Th
est idea of what’s going on down there.” that’s going to affect the Great Lakes as we lose Ontario, and is still recovering from t
our snow and ice cover and as our winters get done by a string of punishing storms
During the winters of 2017 and 2018, Bram- warmer but also drier and windier,” Bramburger one so-called 500-year storm, that ba
burger and a few colleagues at the University said. “Drier and windier means we’re going to city within the past eight years. A few
of Minnesota set out to remedy that gap in our start losing snow on the ice, and as it gets warmer, met with Bramburger, Michael LeBea
knowledge and ventured onto the frozen sur- we’re just going to start losing ice. In the Great no-nonsense construction project s
faces of several lakes that drain into Superior Lakes we see large algal blooms of a species called gave me a tour of the waterfront, wher
to drill some holes in the ice. “We just had our Aulacoseira. It’s a big diatom, and it likes to be on levels and three intense windstorms h
minds blown,” Bramburger said. Instead of the the bottom of thick, snow-covered ice. If we start extensive flooding damage the year b
sluggish scene they expected, the waters beneath losing that, we’ll probably lose one of the really
the ice brimmed with life. “The photosynthetic important components of the food web. In 2016 one storm knocked out the
rates happening under the ice were 60 percent of Duluth’s water supply. A city on the e
what they are in the summer. And that was under “The thing I’m always struck by is that we of the world’s largest bodies of freshw
two feet of ice and two feet of snow. So you think don’t understand winter, but we’re losing it. It’s a within hours of running out of wate
it’s just a cold, dark, boring world down there, race to figure out what happens in winter before out over a stretch of prime urban sho
but there’s actually a lot going on.” Zooplankton there’s no winter to figure out.” soon will be protected by 76,000 ton
abounded—about 1,500 of them per liter—all mined from a nearby quarry, LeBea
swimming about, gobbling up algae. Heavy rain was forecast for the morning of our what the future would bring. “I’m
swim, which had given me hope that I might yet almost exhausted the quarry,” he sa
Without a healthy crop of diatoms to sup- avoid the ordeal. No such luck. At 5:30 a.m. on going to be spending close to $30 m
port the zooplankton’s winter feeding frenzy, the appointed day, 13 of us huddled around a three big storms. For a small and
the lake’s productivity for the rest of the year bonfire on a dark, fogbound, rocky beach not wealthy city, it has been a big blow. W
would suffer. Because small fish in the lakes eat far from downtown Duluth, drinking coffee. building now is the best we can afford
zooplankton, a plunge in the diatom numbers This group plunge would mark 47 consecutive conceivable that if these storms cont
would cause fish populations to crash. “It’s the months of, well, jumping into a lake. Michael worse, it won’t be possible to get bac
jump start of the spring food web,” Bramburger Scharenbroich, one of Bramburger’s friends, we were. And no one can understand
said. The solar energy snagged by diatoms pro- took the water’s temperature: “Fifty-one
vides the calories that become the flesh of ever degrees,” he yelled. Go time. Without water Such city-pounding storms are likely
larger creatures in a daisy chain of embodied shoes, I lagged behind the collective charge, and a costly new normal. Global warming
light. “If you’re catching big bass in the summer,” hobbled over stones dropped by glaciers millen- lizing the jet stream, the high-altitude
Bramburger said, “it’s because these guys were nia ago. Then the need to relieve the pain in my that flows from west to east around t
doing their thing in the winter.” feet overcame a visceral reluctance to dive in. The temperature differences betwe
All around me heads vanished and quickly reap- and high latitudes that drive the jet st
One of the group’s most counterintuitive dis- peared above the surface, like a pod of startled declined, slowing that vast river of ai
coveries was that diatoms were more efficient otters, wide-eyed with shock and glee. has affected seasonal weather patter
beneath snow-covered ice than beneath ice are becoming simultaneously mor
that had been cleared of snow. Diatoms need One jump, it turned out, wasn’t enough. We and more intense. Some climate mod
just the right balance of depth and sunlight. If warmed up and went in again. And a third time. that the number of extreme rainstor
they sink too deep, they don’t get enough light. As the bonfire dwindled and the sky lightened wide will double with each one-degr
If they’re higher up in the water column, they to a silvery gray, people started to leave, but increase in global warming, a trend th
can get burned. Snow may be protecting them Bramburger lingered. In a few days he would may be under way. Heavy spring rai
from excessive sunlight. Under cleared ice, solar be moving to Canada to start a new job, and it led to record-high lake levels and w
radiation may damage the diatoms’ photosyn- was clear he would miss mornings like this. “I’ve
thetic pigments. One explanation: “Their photo lived around many places in the Great Lakes, WA
systems, their pigments, were basically getting but Lake Superior seems to have a bit of magic SO-C
for people,” he’d told me. “The sense of identity

62 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

th has—I’ve flooding across the Great Lakes region. INVITED AND
akes.” As we drove along the shoreline on the north- UNINVITED GUESTS
n be treach-
ern outskirts of the city, LeBeau said that a win- Not all non-native species in the Great Lakes are invasive. Some, such
is the sec- ter storm early in 2019 had covered the road we as the coho salmon, were purposefully brought in from Washington,
hunder Bay, were on with four feet of sand and gravel. “We’re Oregon, and Alaska in the 1960s to foster sportfishing and to stock
the damage looking at another three years of construction— the lakes after devastating declines in native lake trout populations.
s, including assuming we don’t get another big storm.”
Fast-growing and predatory, the coho salmon thrive among other
attered the F I V E H U N D R E D F I F T Y M I L E S to the southeast, introduced fish, such as Chinook salmon and brown and rainbow
days after I on another summer day pregnant with rain, a trout. Whether introduced intentionally or not, non-native species
au, Duluth’s small group of women clustered around a red,
supervisor, diamond-shaped sign on a beach in Maumee Bay have forever altered the food web of the lakes.
re high lake State Park, on the shore of Lake Erie a short drive
had caused from Toledo, Ohio. What they read troubled them: ILLUSTRATION: FIORELLA IKEUE
before. “DANGER Avoid all contact with the water. Algal
e power for toxins at UNSAFE levels have been detected.”
edge of one
water came The women, students from Bowling Green
er. Looking State University, had been swimming in the
oreline that greenish water and had somehow missed see-
ns of stone ing the sign before. We were the only ones on
au worried the beach, and when I approached, they asked
told we’ve questions I couldn’t answer: Would they be OK?
aid. “We’re How dangerous were the toxins? “We’ll never
million for come back to this beach,” said Marharita-Sophia
d not very Tavpash, visibly shaken, as she and her friends
What we’re hurried back to their car.
d. It really is
tinue or get Since the early 2000s, harmful algal blooms
ck to where have plagued Lake Erie almost every summer.
d that.” The Great Lakes host a variety of algae and similar
y to become organisms, and most of them, like diatoms, are
g is destabi- essential for the lakes’ health. But some can choke
e air current the life out of lakes. Most problematic are cya-
the planet. nobacteria, ancient organisms present in nearly
een middle every body of water. Given the right conditions—
tream have warm, polluted water—they grow explosively,
ir. And that forming slimy, green scum. When the algae
rns: Storms decompose, they suck oxygen from the water,
e sporadic creating large dead zones, sometimes releasing
dels predict toxins that can be fatal to wildlife. In humans they
rms world- can blister the skin and damage the liver.
ree-Celsius
hat already As recently as 25 years ago, algal blooms
ins in 2019 seemed to be a problem of the past. Before
widespread Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972,
blooms had blighted the lake year after year.
But the legislation imposed strict regulations on

AS BATTERED IN 2012 BY A
ALLED 500-YEAR STORM.

A FOOD WEB The original alpha
DISRUPTED
Lake trout were once at the top of
A thriving, complex food web is crucial to
the health of one of Earth’s largest surface the Great Lakes food chain. Their
freshwater ecosystems. But introductions
and invasions of non-native aquatic plants numbers were decimated during the
and animals, the harvesting and stocking of
top predator fish, and elevated nutrient and past century after the introduction
contaminant levels have snarled the Great
Lakes food web, affecting fisheries, wildlife, of the non-native sea lamprey.
and the health of the ecosystem.
A disruptive parasite

Sea lampreys invaded via locks and

canals; they attach to large fish and

Alewives suck their blood. Lake trout, white-
discovered in fish, and chub populations began
Lake Ontario collapsing by the 1940s and 1950s.
(invasive)
Rainbow smelt
=~::
• ••
•
••Number of new Brown trout
• ••invasive species in introduced in
Lake Michigan
• •• • • • • • • •••• • •••• •••• •••• •.••/••:•·•- •• •• •••r•••:•••• • • •••• ••• • •••••• ••• •••••• ••r•• :.••••theGreatLakesbyyear(managed)
Common carp
1860 1880 1890 ••• •••• •• ••• •••
•• •
••
1870 1900 1910 1920

THE LAKES TODAY • :xxo •Lake trout Burbot Walleye Smallmouth bass White bass r FISH EATERS
Lota lota Stizostedion vitreum Micropterus dolomieu Morone chrysops
More than 180 non-native species with Brook trout Salvelinus namaycush Atlantic salmon ocxx f
reproducing populations continue to ~ \\\,l. Salmo salar
threaten the Great Lakes Basin. Salvelinus fontinalis ~ American eel
Yellow perch \.\.. Anguilla rostrata
\. Eats forage fish Perca flavescens
~
Eats macroinvertebrates ~

Chubs and ciscoes eat

zooplankton, small crus-

taceans, and fish, and are FORAGE FISH
.....prey for piscivores.
r •Cisco Bloater Emerald shiner Deepwater sculpin Slimy sculpin Channel catfish Freshwater drum
•Lake sturgeon 0 Notropis atherinoides Myoxocephalus thompsonii Aplodinotus grunniens
Cottus cognatus Ictalurus punctatus
Kiyi ~ \\\ \
\.\..\\\; ~\\;
Acipenser fulvescens Coregonus kiyi Coregonus artedi Coregonus hoyi
~~Eats zooplankton
Eats round gobies
Eats macroinvertebrates

.I.f.i.l.l' •f•f•f•f•( •r•/1••1•1 liT .....MACROINVERTEBRATES

Opossum shrimp Mollusks Chironomids/ • ::>e• O •I•f•f( ffi((
Oligochaetes Amphipods Amphipods
Mysis relicta lLl Mayfly nymphs
Hexagenia spp. Diporeia Gammarus
~Eats zooplankton
Lake sturgeons are large, ancient ~
fish that eat organisms on the lake Eats phytoplankton
bottom, including invasive mus-
sels and round gobies. KEY Species ) • MICHIGAN "\• HURON • ERIE '• ONTARIO
present With the longest shore- Connected to the
CONNECTED BUT UNIQUE in lake SUPERIOR Lake Michigan line of all the Great Erie is the warmest, Atlantic Ocean via the
stretches 307 miles Lakes (3,830 miles, shallowest, and most
The Great Lakes system includes the five Great Native species The coldest, deepest, north to south and including islands),
Lakes (Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Invasive species and historically least is home to 94 non- Huron now hosts 94 productive of the St. Lawrence River,
Ontario), Lake St. Clair, and their connecting Stocked/managed species productive of the Great native species. non-native species.
channels. Each lake has distinctive basin fea- Lakes, Superior now has
tures, circulation patterns, and ecologies. 82 non-native species. Great Lakes; 148 Lake Ontario has 104

non-native species are non-native species.

established there.

Zebra mussels

Quagga mussels

An invader fills the gap Managed at the top of the chain Destroying the base of the web

Without lake trout to feed on the Introduced Pacific salmon consume Zebra mussels Invasive zebra mussels were

alewife—a small river herring—the alewife and rainbow smelt and pro- discovered •••••••••••••••• surpassed by the closely related
.....,. ~\ ) .•••••••••••••••••• Quagga
mussels ••••••••••••••••
. .•• •• discovered
invasive fish’s population exploded vide a sport fishery that’s heavily •••••••••••••• •••••• • quagga mussels. Both carpet the
••••• •••••• ••••••• •••••••••••••• ••••• • ••••••• •••••••••••• •••• lake bed, relentlessly filtering vital
Sea lamprey throughout the lakes. managed through stocking and har- phytoplankton from the water.

( . r: .•• discovered in vest regulations. Ruffe ••••••••••• •••••••• ••••••••• •••••••••• •••••• •••••• ••••• •• •• •• •• ••••• •••••••••••
Lake Michigan
•••••••••• •••••••••• •••••••••• •••• •••••• ••••• •••••••••• ••••••••
••• ••••• ••••••• ••••••• White perch •••• •••• ••••• •••• ••• •••• •••• ••• •••• •• Salmon ••••••• •••••••• ••••• ••••• •••• •••• •••• ••••••
•• introduced
•• • • •• •• •• •• •• • • •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •
•• •••• ••••• •
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

FISH EATERS Chinook salmon Brown trout Rainbow trout Introduced rainbow trout ••••• PARASITE
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha Salmo trutta Oncorhynchus mykiss have long been stocked and
.1.1./. J. managed to provide a sport Sea lamprey
fishery in near-shore areas
Coho salmon and in connected tributaries. Salvelinus namaycush
Oncorhynchus kisutch

FORAGE FISH

Ruffe •Rainbow smelt Rainbow smelts feed on Alewife Common carp White perch •Lake whitefish Round goby
Gymnocephalus zooplankton and larval fish, Alosa pseudoharengus Cyprinus carpio Morone americana Neogobius melanostomus
cernuus Osmerus mordax including their own young. Coregonus clupeaformis
They’re eaten by game fish
and harvested by fisheries.

MACROINVERTEBRATES

New Zealand mud snail Bloody red shrimp Fishhook water flea Spiny water flea Zebra and quagga mussels Native lake whitefish eat inva- Round gobies aggressively
Potamopyrgus antipodarum Hemimysis anomala Bythotrephes longimanus Dreissena polymorpha sive mussels, which are low in consume zebra and quagga
Cercopagis pengoi and Dreissena bugensis nutritional value, producing mussels. They’re eaten by
declines in this important cul- several fish and birds, carry-
)j))) tural and commercial fish. ing toxins up the food web.

ZOOPLANKTON Bythotrephes, a water A HIJACKED SYSTEM
Zooplankton are microscopic animals found mainly in flea with a long, spiny
the water column. They consume phytoplankton and tail, eats other zooplank- Invasive species have rewired the Great Lakes food web.
are consumed by other animals, including predatory ton and competes with Sea lampreys attack top predators; round gobies compete
zooplankton and forage fish. fish for food. It’s now with fish for food sources and habitat. Meanwhile, invasive
widespread in the lakes. mussels redirect the flow of energy, diverting food from
PHYTOPLANKTON the water column to the lake bed.
Microorganisms fuel the web. Phytoplankton—including Microcystis JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI
Cyclotella and other diatoms—are eaten by zooplankton Cyclotella ILLUSTRATIONS: FIORELLA IKEUE
and bottom-dwelling organisms. Cyanobacteria such as SOURCES: ASHLEY ELGIN, DORAN MASON, ED RUTHERFORD,
Microcystis are also key primary producers. AND ROCHELLE STURTEVANT, NOAA GREAT LAKES
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

LAKE HURON Top: The William P. Rend, a barge carrying limestone, sank in Lake Huron during ILLINOIS RIVER
a storm in September 1917. Now it’s one of roughly 6,000 shipwrecks on the bottom of the
Great Lakes. It’s covered in part by zebra and quagga mussels, which were introduced by ocean Illinois state fishermen
vessels and now disrupt the lake’s ecosystem. Above: Sea lampreys, an invasive species from catch Asian carp on the
the Atlantic, use their toothy, suction cup mouths to adhere to lake trout and other prey, gorg- Illinois River, hoping to
ing on blood and body fluids. A single lamprey can kill 40 pounds of fish in 12 to 18 months. prevent their spread to
Lake Michigan. Since
escaping from aquacul-
ture and sewage ponds
in the Mississippi River
Basin during the 1960s
and 1970s, the carp
have decimated native
fish. They’ve recently
been found nine miles
from Lake Michigan.





DETROIT RIVER

The Detroit River
divides Windsor,
Ontario (left), from
Detroit on its course
to Lake Erie. In 1969
one of the Detroit’s
tributaries, the River
Rouge, was so polluted
it caught fire, an event
that helped provoke
the environmental
movement in the U.S.

NEARLY EVERY SUMMER FOR THE
PAST 20 YEARS, ALGAL BLOOMS

sewage treatment plants and led to the removal said Laura Johnson, an environmental scien-
of phosphates from laundry detergents. Algae tist who has directed the center since 2016 and
thrive on phosphorus; without large influxes whose own work has been pivotal in unraveling
of the element, the blooms can’t grow. For one the algal bloom conundrum. “It was way over
halcyon decade, the lake remained bloom free. two million, and I know that’s an underestimate.”

So why have the blooms returned? To meet Every year they collect roughly 10,000 sam-
the people who solved that mystery, I drove to ples, testing each for 11 different parameters,
Heidelberg University, in Tiffin, Ohio, whose 125- Ewing noted, between bites of a salad. “We’re
acre campus in the state’s corn belt houses what wickedly efficient.”
some scientists call a national treasure: a metic-
ulous, 45-year record of the chemicals that flow All that sampling revealed that a conserva-
into Lake Erie from two large tributaries, the tion practice that was supposed to improve the
Maumee and Sandusky Rivers. The collectors lake’s water quality has had the opposite effect.
and proud curators of that trove are two women In the 1990s many farmers in the lake’s water-
who have devoted more than 40 years to the task shed incorporated “no-till” agriculture. Instead
of diagnosing Lake Erie’s ills. of plowing fertilizer into their fields every spring,
farmers started to spread pellets onto the fields’
“We predate the EPA,” said Ellen Ewing, over surface. The reduction in plowing did reduce
lunch at one of the university’s dining halls. soil erosion, but it unexpectedly has increased
“We’re older than Earth Day!” the amount of algae food flowing into the lake.
When phosphorus was plowed eight inches or
Ewing, who has short gray hair and the crisp, so into the ground, it remained tightly bound to
assured manner of someone who knows her the soil. But with phosphorus pellets sitting in
work inside and out, was talking about Hei- the upper inch or two of the soil, the phosphorus
delberg’s National Center for Water Quality dissolves and washes into the lake whenever the
Research, founded in 1969. She has worked soil becomes saturated with rainwater. Research-
there since 1976, right after graduating from ers now use spring rainfall data to forecast the
the university. Ewing started two years before severity of algal blooms.
her longtime colleague and fellow Heidelberg
alum, Barbara Merryfield, sitting next to her at The number of days with two inches of pre-
our table. Their job titles are lab manager and cipitation or more has more than doubled in the
research associate, respectively—neither has a past two decades, Johnson said: “That’s the big
Ph.D.—but the data they’ve amassed over the problem.” But, she added, it’s a problem we can
decades have enabled researchers to under- fix. Johnson’s mentor, Jennifer Tank, an ecolo-
stand the puzzling resurgence of Lake Erie’s gist at the University of Notre Dame, has been
algal blooms. working with farmers on ways to reduce runoff
from their fields—and to prepare them for the
Every week for more than 40 years, Ewing, rigors of a new climate era.
Merryfield, and their small team have collected
water samples from the Maumee, Sandusky, and The same heavy spring rains that washed phos-
other watersheds. “I used to drive 500 miles a phorus into Lake Erie forced farmers in the region
week,” Merryfield said. “I was out three days to delay their spring planting in 2019. Fields were
a week. Quite a few involved being stuck in the so wet and muddy that farmers fell weeks behind.
mud up to our axles.” With her strong build and
denim shirt, she still looked capable of dealing “A record number of acres weren’t planted this
with a mired four-by-four. year [2019],” said Kaleb Kolberg, a 26-year-old
farmer in Hartford, Michigan, about 12 miles from
“When Barb had a work anniversary, I calcu- the shore of Lake Michigan. Most people couldn’t
lated the number of samples she had processed,” plant on one-quarter of their land. Pointing to

74 N A T I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

one of his own fields behind his home, he said, down the water supply of a major city.
“That corn would normally be twice as high. We On Friday, August 1, 2014, at about 7 p.m.,
planted in conditions we never planted in before.
We usually harvest corn in mid-September. This Toledo’s director of public utilities received a call
year it will be mid-October.” from the department’s chief chemist. Routine
tests of the city’s water showed that it had been
It had been a stressful year—on top of all the contaminated with microcystin—an algal toxin.
normal challenges of farming life. “It costs $600 Advising residents to boil their water wasn’t an
to raise an acre of corn,” said Kolberg, a muscu- option—it would only concentrate the poison. So
lar former college linebacker and self-described at 2 a.m., the city issued a “do not drink” advi-
farm nerd. A single tractor costs $300,000. “You sory. For more than two days, until the water was
take all the risks up front and hope it pays off in treated, nearly half a million Toledo residents
the fall.” Kolberg fared better than most. Work- couldn’t drink from their taps.
ing with Colleen Forestieri and Erin Fuller of the
county conservation district and with Jennifer Six years later, the catastrophe still rankles
Tank, Kolberg had been planting cover crops of Wade Kapszukiewicz, Toledo’s current mayor. “It
ryegrass and crimson clover for several years to caused businesses to close,” he said. “It caused
protect his land during the off-seasons. Driving hospitals to not be able to do surgeries—if there’s
around southwestern Michigan with Kolberg no water, there’s no surgery. It was a traumatic
in his pickup on a hot August afternoon, across event for our region.”
a landscape planed by glaciers, even a lifelong
urbanite could spot the farms that had planted His office, 22 floors above downtown Toledo,
cover crops. The corn grown on fields without overlooks the Maumee River. Three years ago, he
them was noticeably shorter, sometimes by said, when a bloom on Lake Erie spread upriver,
several inches; some fields weren’t planted at the Maumee looked as if it had been dyed green.
all—they were just too wet for tractors. Some still The city has spent more than a billion dollars
held pools of standing water. to upgrade its stormwater system and water-
treatment plant, including improvements to
Kolberg said he was able to plant on more of filter and eliminate microcystin and a buoy
his farm than his neighbors were able to plant with special sensors that monitor the extent of
thanks to cover crops, which pulled moisture algal blooms near the city’s water-intake pipe in
out of the ground. “With cover crops, we’re Lake Erie. So a repeat of the crisis is unlikely—a
ready for the two extremes,” he added, “too reassuring bit of knowledge during a pandemic.
much water and too little.” Imagine a city without water now.

Besides keeping farmers such as Kolberg in But Toledo, Kapszukiewicz said, is still paying
the black, the widespread use of cover crops a price for the unregulated release of phosphorus
would cut off the flow of nutrients that fuel algal and other fertilizers into the lake. The problem is
blooms. “We need to protect every square inch that not all farmers are as conscientious as Kol-
of ground,” Tank said. “That would be a game berg. “I don’t need to be awake at 5:10 tomorrow
changer. We need watershed-scale cover crops.” morning to know that the sun will rise in the
east,” Kapszukiewicz said. “I also don’t need to
For all their advantages, cover crops are a hard make yet another visit to yet another farm to
sell. “Cover crops require all the same care as know that agricultural runoff is polluting Lake
regular crops,” Tank said. Farmers don’t make Erie. Everyone already knows that. The only
money on cover crops. question is: What are we going to do to stop it?”
he said. “I am not anti-farmer. I am antipollu-
For now, fertilizer runoff from many farms tion. I know that many farmers are trying often
remains unregulated under the Clean Water very bold technologies to reduce agricultural
Act, even after a phosphorus-fueled bloom shut

THAT CHOKE THE LIFE OUT OF LAKES
HAVE PLAGUED LAKE ERIE.

A THIRD COAST O N TA R I O Main export by port
The Great Lakes, with the longest coastline in the
-•\ Grain
continental U.S., bustle with trade. Some 42 million tons Coal
Bulk cargo
of cargo moved through the St. Lawrence Seaway in 2019. Thunder Bay
The waterway has 15 locks and is part of a 2,340-mile LAKE
SUPERIOR
route stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Supe- CAN.

rior. International shipping, a small share of the cargo U.S.

trade, was once a leading pathway for invasive species. MINN.

LIMITED COMMERCE Silver Bay Brevort
Two Harbors
Most foreign cargo ships, or “salties,” are MICH.
too large to pass through the relatively -\ Duluth
small seaway system locks; they can’t sail Superior Port Inland
inland past Montréal. To travel any farther,
cargo must be loaded onto longer and WISCONSIN
narrower lake freighters, or “lakers.”

1829-1844 Size of Welland Rerouted river Marinette Charlevoix
Canal locks
Completed in 1833, the The pioneering reversal -Green Bay -1.Ludington
first Welland Canal was 27 110 of the Chicago River, com- Manitowoc
miles long. It connected Lakes 22 feet pleted in 1900, reduced LAKE
Ontario and Erie, avoiding the waterborne disease MICHIGAN
impassable Niagara Falls. caused by sewage flowing
into Lake Michigan—the Milwaukee
1845-1866 source of Chicago’s drink-
ing water. But today it
The system was extended could serve as an entryway
to provide a water route for invasive Asian carp.
between Québec and Ontario;
canal depth was increased to 150
nine feet.
26.5

ILLINOIS

1887-1931 Chicago Sanitary-Ch\icago
Burns
Engineers built fewer and Ship Canal Harbor
but larger locks, improving the Indiana Harbor Gary
system’s speed and efficiency.
Moving through locks was 270 INDIANA
time-consuming and costly.

45

1932

The final expansion of the
Welland Canal significantly
increased the size of the
locks and also made it
much deeper.

766

80 1,400

Size of Panama Today
Canal locks
as of 2016 The Panama Canal system
became the default size for
180 ocean shipping; this left the
smaller Welland Canal with
limited international trade.

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK AND JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF; KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI
SOURCES: GREAT LAKES ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY SYSTEM; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORTATION; USGS; ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY MANAGEMENT CORPORATION AND
SAINT LAWRENCE SEAWAY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION; PANAMA CANAL AUTHORITY

Length of shorelines in the contiguous United States Other
lakes and
Superior Michigan Huron Erie Ontario rivers

GREAT LAKES 4,963 miles

EAST COAST 2,069 miles
GULF OF MEXICO
WEST COAST 1,631 miles
1,293 miles

Shipping volume through St. Lawrence Seaway, 2019 Q U É B E CInbound Québec
Outbound
•• Inbound 1 or less 4 8 16 32 Port sending or receiving Trois-Rivières Bécancour
Outbound millions of metric tons cargo through the
St. Lawrence Seaway
50 mi
•0 Other port
50 km Commercial shipping lane

Sault Urban area Sorel-Tracy

Ste. Marie -Salaberry-de-Valleyfield Montréal
Morrisburg
-Bruce Mines

- C AG N A D A
Cheboygan e o rBgai ay n 'O N T A R I O VERMONT
Johnstown
Inbound Ogdensburg Lake
Outbound -LAKE . Lawrence Champlain
LAKE Bath St
HURON N.H.

ONTARIO Picton NEW YORK

Bowmanville
Oshawa £'~'
- .. ..Goderich
Toronto 'Oswego
Mississauga

Oakville~
.. . "'MICHIGAN Rochester Other manufacturing 1.2

' "' •Port Huron Sarnia •Cement clinkers 0.6
- - -Detroit _,"'Hamilton Thorold
Buffalo _-Furnace slags 0.7
Welland Canal
Port Colborne ---' -. Gasoline 1.0
Cement 1.3
Nanticoke
••Fuel oil 1.6
LAKE Other mining 1.0
Coke 0.6
Lake ERIE UNITED Gypsum 0.6
Iron ore 2.4
St. Clair Erie
••-Salt 2.5
... -Monroe,j, S TAT E S Other agriculture 0.3
Windsor ...,;I, Conneaut Corn 0.7
Ashtabula Canola 1.2
Soybeans 1.6
Fairport Harbor PA.
"' • .. --0
Toledo <J,\ Cleveland
Lorain
SanduskyI I; Cargo that transited
at least one lock on the
0 St. Lawrence Seaway, 2019

OHIO

in millions of metric tons Wheat 5

WHAT GETS Internal Canadian shipping IManufacturing 0.7
SHIPPED ON 14.8
-Other mining 0.3
Canadian export to U.S. Salt 0.5
3.7
-Coke 0.8
Canadian non-U.S.
foreign export I-Bituminous coal 2.4
3.9
IIron ore 4.5
THE SEAWAY -•Other agriculture 0.1
U.S. export Soybeans 0.4
Canada relies heavily on to Canada Wheat 1.1

the St. Lawrence Seaway 9.4 Other manufacturing 1.0
for domestic and interna-
tional trade, principally U.S. non-Canadian • Sugar 0.5
of agricultural products. foreign export
The U.S. uses the seaway 1.5 -Chemicals 0.5
mostly to export mineral
products, such as iron ore Non-U.S. foreign shipping to Canada -Iron and steel 0.7
and coal, to Canada. 3.4
-Mining 0.8
INon-Canadian foreign shipping to U.S.
1.7 • Other manufacturing 0.5

-Iron and steel 0.8

-• Mining 0.4

LAKE MICHIGAN

Beneath Chicago, work
continues on one of
the world’s largest
civil engineering proj-
ects: the city’s Tunnel
and Reservoir Plan.
Designed to reduce
flooding and prevent
raw sewage from dis-
charging into Lake
Michigan, the system
is expected to be fully
operational by 2029.



runoff. The biggest problem is caused by these
megafarms, especially CAFOs. This is not mom-
and-pop farming.”

CAFOs, concentrated animal feeding oper-
ations, are essentially factories for raising
animals—a pig, poultry, and beef industrial com-
plex. When the number of animals on a CAFO
exceeds EPA limits, the CAFO must comply with
clean water laws, but many operate just under
the legal limits and escape regulation. A recent
study found that from 2005 to 2018, the number
of farm animals in the 8,300-square-mile Mau-
mee watershed, the largest in the Great Lakes,
more than doubled from nine million to 20 mil-
lion. The amount of manure applied to fields
during that same period—a rich source of phos-
phorus—increased by about 40 percent.

Without more stringent restrictions on phos-
phorus runoff, algal blooms will become a perma-
nent fixture of Lake Erie. One scientist told me
that if current trends continue, the occurrence of
blooms will double by 2040. “This is not a money
problem,” Kapszukiewicz said. “It’s an account-
ability problem. All the money in the world isn’t
going to solve it without accountability.”

T H E L A K E S ’ I M M E N S I T Y belies their fragility. Over [they’re] hit by a big storm,” says Michael Was-
the course of several months I visited all the segijig Price, a traditional ecological knowledge
lakes except Huron. Being young, in geological specialist at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and
terms, they’re not as ecologically diverse as the Wildlife Commission. “It’s what happens when
oceans; they’re immature, more susceptible to you get hit with the unexpected in nature.” Like
threats. Each lake deserves its own story: Mich- multiple 500-year storms in a decade or algal
igan and Huron, which are in effect two lobes blooms on a northern lake.
of a single lake, have the opposite problem from
Lake Erie: They’re too clean. Eighteen years ago Tom Borg had his own
experience of zaasigaakwii. On a February day
Hundreds of trillions of invasive mussels have he drove his snowmobile onto the frozen lake
nearly denuded their waters of plankton; the mus- near his home, something he’d done on count-
sels can filter the amount of water in Lake Michi- less other winter days. He wasn’t far from the
gan in a week or less. Mercury and PCB levels in forested shore when the ice suddenly gave way
the Lake Ontario watershed are so high that many beneath him. Luckily the water was only three
fish there are unsafe to eat. I met with dozens of feet deep—“but just as darn cold as 30 feet,” Borg
researchers who have devoted entire careers to said. “The pain was extreme, like daggers into my
understanding and protecting the lakes. Char-
ter boat captains told me how algal blooms have
gutted their livelihood. And I learned that harm-
ful algal blooms have started to appear on Lake
Superior, the least spoiled of the lakes.

So where does that leave us? The fate of the
lakes—and of the millions of people who depend
on them—might best be described by an Anishi-
naabe word: zaasigaakwii, which has no real
English equivalent.

“It refers to birds arriving in spring, then

80 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

HOW TO HELP

The Nature Conservancy works
with farmers to reduce the
flow of phosphorus into the
Great Lakes by planting cover
crops and other practices.
nature.org

Friends of the Detroit River is
restoring waterways and land
in Michigan and Ontario, with
a focus on the Detroit River.
detroitriver.org

The Ojibwe (an Anishinaabe
tribe) consider wild rice sacred
and have grown it for centu-
ries. Purchasing it from the
tribe injects cash into the local
economy and helps promote
sustainable development.
LLwildrice.com

LAKE MICHIGAN

The Coast Guard Fes-
tival in Grand Haven,
Michigan, started as
an informal picnic for
Coast Guard families
in 1924. It now draws
crowds of 350,000
every summer, with
concerts, ship tours,
and fireworks. The tra-
dition was interrupted
in 2020, when the
pandemic forced the
event’s cancellation.

MORGAN HEIM

legs.” Somehow he managed to pull his snowmo- step up the trail, the threats to the continent’s five
bile from the lake and drive back to his cabin, freshwater seas momentarily recede, becoming
where he started a fire that warded off certain problems of some other world, some other time.
hypothermia. “If it wasn’t for my grandfather’s
teachings to keep my wits about me and don’t Borg pauses and suggests that I take a maple
panic, I might not have survived.” leaf home as a gift from the watershed, a talis-
man as fragile and lovely as the lake below us.
On a cool September morning, Kama Bay, an Later, reflecting on the day he almost died from
inlet on the northern edge of Lake Superior, looks exposure, he said that perhaps he hadn’t been as
serene, untainted—not endangered by anything careful as he should have been—maybe he could
at all. It soon vanishes from view as Borg and I have looked more closely at the ice, maybe he
ascend a steep, maple-lined trail off the inlet’s would have seen the danger ahead. “Nature isn’t
shore. Some maples seem to glow, the season’s mean,” he said. “It’s unforgiving.” j
alchemy turning their leaves flame red. We pass
a stream and small waterfall, whose waters would Tim Folger wrote about the Arctic’s dwindling
soon reach the Anishinaabe’s Great Lake and sea ice in the January 2018 issue. Keith Ladzinski
eventually spill over Niagara Falls. With each photographed America’s changing national parks
for the December 2016 issue.

S O G R E AT, S O F R A G I L E 81

Story and photographs by
HANNAH REYES MORALES

Songs
to Soothe

In cultures around the world, the lullabies
that coax children to sleep are windows into
parents’ hopes, fears, and dreams for the future.

Mongolia

Altanzul Sukhchuluun
and her daughter,
Khulan, snuggle at
bedtime in Ulaanbaatar.
Altanzul is a nurse
at a family clinic in her
district, where she
tends to women
and children living in
communities with
the most polluted air
in the country.

THE TIM HETHERINGTON TRUST
PROVIDED SUPPORT FOR THE
PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS STORY.

83



Turkey

Syrian girls play with
dolls before bedtime
in the Boynuyogun
refugee camp in Hatay
Province. It’s too hot
to play outside during
the day, so the girls
take afternoon naps
and move to the play-
ground in the evening.



United States

Xavier Zakrajsek, six,
hugs his doll with toy
hearing implants in Ayer,
Massachusetts. Xavier
is deaf and uses cochlear
implants to help him
hear. After singing
a lullaby, his mother,
Jessica, says “I love you”
out loud every night in
case the implants fail.
“I make sure to tell him
in case it is the last
thing he hears.”

The song comes Philippines
alive as night
draws in. Hear it Amy Villaruel puts
curl beneath the her daughter Jazzy to
blanket, slip bed in Bataan Province.
between the fold For the Villaruels, who
of cradling arms, rely on spearfishing for
in rooms across their income, bedtime
the world. To an is dictated by the tides.
audience of Amy’s husband and
children, a hidden sons often fish at night.
chorus of caregivers
fills the night with LISTEN TO AMY’S
song. They’re LULLABY ON YOUTUBE.
singing lullabies. Use your phone’s camera
to scan the QR codes in
the story to hear lullabies
from around the world.

For Khadija al Mohammad, night- A S I A more than a half million people.
time has always been the time for PHILIPPINES Khadija, now a Turkish citizen, is

silence, comfort, and quieting the like many mothers around the world,

noises of the day. When her eldest nurturing children and soothing

son, Muhammed, was born 19 years them with lullabies in environments

ago, a decade before the Syrian civil fraught with hazards. Sung in our most

war, she sang sweet lullabies—songs passed intimate spaces as our days come to a close,

down by her mother and grandmother, songs these songs hold far more than their function.

of heritage and place. As situations change, lullabies help to establish

As the conflict escalated, her family left their safe spaces for children. Today, amid sweeping

home in Kafr Nubl in 2013 and made a reluctant changes driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, lul-

crossing to Turkey, where her youngest child, labies endure as an especially important way to

Ahmad, three, was born. preserve tender moments between parents and

Khadija’s lullabies have changed with her jour- their young children.

ney. A schoolteacher and mother of five, she is

among 12 million displaced from Syria since 2011, SUNG ACROS S CULTURE S, lullabies echo the histo-

the result of a conflict that has killed probably ries of those who sing them. Khadija’s lullabies

NGM MAPS S O N G S T O S O O T H E 89

ASIA
EUR.

TURKEY

Turkey

Songs reflect
a time of
upheaval

Khadija al
Mohammad puts
her son Ahmad,
three, to bed in
their home in
Șanlıurfa. Khadija’s
family fled Syria in
2013. She recalls
how her lullabies
evolved from the
sweet traditional
songs that she
sang to her older
children to today’s
lullabies about war
and migration.

‘I placed
you in
the loft
to sleep,
but I
feared
the
snake.’

LISTEN TO A
SYRIAN REFUGEE’S
LULLABY.

90



RIGHT

Sedil al Mohammad,
12, here looking from
her home’s rooftop,
often asks her mother,
Khadija, about life
in Syria. Khadija says
she sings songs from
Syria to give her
children a sense of
their homeland.

BELOW

Pigeons fly above the
city of Hatay at dusk.
Hundreds of thousands
of Syrians have found
refuge in this area near
the Syrian border.
Turkey has the world’s
largest population of
refugees, including 3.6
million Syrians who have
fled conflict at home.

LISTEN TO A
4,000-YEAR-OLD
LULLABY.

92 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

the way. They contain the traces of those who
came before us, and they will carry traces of us
long after we’re gone. Within these songs we’ve
expressed not just our greatest fears, but in the
same breath, our hopes and prayers. They are
likely to be the first love songs children hear.

Like many lullabies around the world, Khad-
ija’s song is a response to the pressures of the
day. And although lullabies sound soothing and
reassuring, their lyrics often are dark and far
from comforting—they’re a window into our
fears. The Icelandic lullaby “Bíum, Bíum, Bam-
baló” is haunted by a face at the window. The
Russian “Bayu Bayushki Bayu” warns to stay
away from the edge of the bed or a little gray
wolf will drag a baby into the woods and under
a willow bush.

As lullabies hold our fears about a world that’s
often unforgiving and cruel, these songs don’t
always shield us from it. “Rock-a-Bye, Baby,” one
of the most well-known English-language lulla-
bies, is after all a song about a cradle falling from
a treetop, baby and all.

But lesser known are the lyrics of a modern,
longer version. “Rock a bye baby / do not you
fear / Never mind baby / Mother is near” begins
the last stanza. Lullabies reveal our fears, but
perhaps more importantly, they are a reflection
of our reassurances. “Now sound asleep / until
morning light,” it concludes.

became songs about the war. “My children knew I N JA PA N T H E “Itsuki no Komoriuta,” or “Lulla-
about my feelings,” she muses. From their tent bies of Itsuki,” are the songs of young girls who
in a resettlement camp to their home in an were sent to work as live-in nannies for wealthier
apartment in Şanlıurfa, nightmares have fol- families in the village of Itsuki during the cen-
lowed Khadija. She dreams of helicopters and tury before WWII. “Nobody will shed tears when I
of the Syrian army following her, and she wakes
up worrying about her children. They huddle die. Only cicadas on the persimmon tree will cry”
around her when they see her in tears. By a mat- are lyrics from a well-known Itsuki lullaby.
tress on the floor, she gently lays Ahmad down
on her legs, rocks him slowly, and sings. A few years ago, in the Philippines, I sang a
lullaby for the first time to my stepson, who
“Ohh aircraft, fly in the sky and do not strike was four years old at the time. The apartment
the children in the street. Be tender and kind to my husband and I had moved into in Manila’s
these children.” business district was new to him and a weari-
some boat ride away from his mother and his
A Babylonian lullaby that’s about 4,000 years home by the seaside on the island of Mindoro.
old was found inscribed on a clay tablet. By He was frightened when the lights went out. As
the glow of a phone or to the thrum of a city, he started crying, I was sure I was doing every-
lullabies still charm babies to sleep today. We thing terribly wrong, denting a relationship that
inherit them, and we pass them on. We carry lul- is precious and delicate to me. In panic, I carried
labies across borders and make new ones along him and began to sing “You Are My Sunshine.”
On that warm summer night he fell asleep, his
DThe nonprofit National Geographic Society helped tears drying to the hum of the fan. But whose
fund this article. fears had I been assuaging?

S O N G S T O S O O T H E 93

AFRICA

LIBERIA

Liberia

Shared
storytelling in
the evening

Children gather
around Patience
Brooks, who holds
her younger daugh-
ter, Marta, in her
lap in Mamba Point,
Monrovia. Mothers
and children in
her neighborhood
take turns telling
stories as they
prepare dinner for
their families.

‘Sleep,
baby,
sleep.
Momma
want to
see you
sleepy.
And then
when you
sleepy,
Momma
feel so
fine.’

LISTEN TO
PATIENCE’S
LULLABY.

94

•

•. . .

"

••

T H E R E I S A G ROW I N G B O DY of research about else—is common across cultures. Many and
how lullabies help soothe both caregiver and lurid are the child-snatching, child-snacking
child. Laura Cirelli, professor of developmental beasts that await those who resist sleep. The
psychology at the University of Toronto, stud- horror in these visions bypasses those too young
ies the science of maternal song. She found to understand. But for older children, including
that when mothers sang lullabies, stress levels those sharing bed spaces, lullabies—like other
dropped not just for the baby but for mothers forms of folklore—are an important means of
as well. In her most recent work, she found that broadcasting a picture of the world.
familiar songs soothed babies the most—more
than speaking or hearing unfamiliar songs. “ I S I N G TO F O RG E T T H E B A BY ’ S PA ,” Patience
Brooks says with a smile after settling her eight-
A new mother herself, Cirelli sees singing lul- month-old daughter, Marta, to sleep. Bedtime
labies as a “multimodal experience” shared by at Patience’s home in Monrovia, Liberia, is an
mother and child. “It’s not just about the baby animated affair. The Mamba Point neighbor-
hearing music,” she says. “It’s about being held hood vibrates with music, the scrape of dinner-
by the mom, having her face very close, and feel- time, and conversation. Her nighttime tunes
ing her warm, gentle rocking.” are a blend of song, scat, and beatbox known
locally as “lie-lies.” Lie-lie songs are creative
From culture to culture, lullabies “tend to have expressions made up by babies’ caretakers to
collections of features that make them soothing stop them from crying, to put them to bed, or
or calming,” says Samuel Mehr, director of Har- to entertain. Patience drums against Marta’s
vard University’s Music Lab, which studies how back as the pair bump and sway, and the girl
music works and why it exists. The lab’s project,
the Natural History of Song, found that people
can hear universal traits in music—even when
they are listening to songs from other cultures.
The project asked 29,000 participants to listen
to 118 songs and identify whether it was a heal-
ing song, a dance song, a love song, or a lullaby.
“Statistically, people are most consistent in iden-
tifying lullabies,” he says.

In a separate study, Mehr’s lab found that
even when infants were listening to lullabies
that were not sung by their own caregiver, or
were not from their own culture, they were
still soothed. “There seems to be some kind of
parenting-music connection that is both univer-
sal around the world but also old, sort of ancient.
This is something that we’ve been doing for a
really long time.”

The earliest complete record of a lullaby
begins, “Little baby in the dark house.” It tells of
a “house god” who, disturbed by the screaming
of a baby, darkly calls for the child.

“They were rather brutal about it,” says Rich-
ard Dumbrill, the director of the International
Council of Near-Eastern Archaeomusicology
at the University of London who translated the
4,000-year-old tablet from Akkadian script.
“And indeed, remember, these were brutal
times. Human life was very, very cheap. It is
possible that by educating their babies in fear,
it would bring them to adulthood with reflexes
of defense.”

The lullaby as a cautionary tale—sleep, or

96 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

LEFT

After years of home-
lessness, Christiana
Gmah sings praise
songs to her daughter
Orinna at her home in
the West Point town-
ship in Monrovia. Her
parents sent her away
when she became
pregnant at 13 with
her first daughter,
Georgina. Today she
sells tea and bread
at night to support
her daughters.

BELOW

Dusk descends on
the township on the
Atlantic Ocean. The
impoverished commu-
nity outside Monrovia’s
city center is over-
crowded and lacks
adequate utilities and
basic sanitation.

S O N G S T O S O O T H E 97

Beloved stuffed animals are displayed in the children’s bedrooms that photographer Hannah Reyes
Morales visited around the world. Some of the children sang lullabies to their stuffed animals.

falls asleep to her mother’s dance.

Sleep, baby, sleep
Sleep, baby, sleep
Momma want to see you sleepy
And then when you sleepy
Momma feel so fine
Momma feel so good
So sleep, sleep
Sleep, baby, sleep

For Patience, a mother of two who gave birth
to her first daughter at 13, mothering presents
challenges familiar to the estimated three in 10
Liberian teens who have had a baby or been preg-
nant between the ages of 15 and 19.

In this neighborhood, the spaces outside
become communal living rooms as neighbors
help with the day-to-day tasks of caring for chil-
dren. Women take turns watching over dozens of
children as they play and share, allowing mothers
to prepare dinners for their families and spend
time at home in the evening after a workday.

“Once upon a time…” Patience begins, and the
children listen. They take turns making up tales
and sing songs together. The tiny space fills with
the lore of kings and queens. As night falls, the
air is charged with musical refrains of magical
creatures and adventures in the woods.

Cirelli’s research found that children who
share synchronous musical experiences with
other people are more likely to offer them sup-
port. “If you are singing the same songs as your
community members,” Cirelli says, “it’s this cue
for kinship and group membership.”

Bedtime and lullabies are as diverse as our
world. For 10-year-old Zaijan Villaruel, who lives
in the Philippines, sleep is dictated by the tides
of the sea and his family’s needs. At night he
fishes with his father and older brothers and falls
asleep to the sound of the waves and the motor
of the outrigger boat on the way home.

The Philippines is part of the Coral Triangle,
with more species of marine life than anywhere
else on Earth. Fishing communities like the one
where Zaijan and his dad, Umbing Villaruel, live,
rely on the sea for sustenance and bear some of
the greatest brunt of climate change.

Umbing does not want his sons to become
fishermen; catches have dwindled drasti-
cally in the past decade from overfishing. But
because of the lockdown during the pandemic,
Zaijan learned to fish to help provide for his

S O N G S T O S O O T H E 99

MONGOLIA

ASIA

Mongolia

When naps
are a break
from pollution

Kindergartners
from a community
near a landfill take
a nap in a day care
in Ulaanbaatar.
Power plants and
homes heated
with coal cause air
pollution to reach
hazardous levels.
These rooms have
air purifiers, which
are not available
in most homes.

‘A lively,
busy
day is
coming
to an end.
Upon us
is a magic
tale
night.’

LISTEN TO A
MONGOLIAN
LULLABY

100



family. “He learned to survive in a time of loss,”
Umbing says.

During the daytime, Zaijan sings songs he
learned from the karaoke machine to his two-
year-old baby sister, Jazzy, in their home in the
province of Bataan. He rocks her gently back and
forth, and she falls asleep to a song about a boy
hoping for a girl’s tears to dry.

In the Philippines, where I am from, the words
“Tahan na” are uttered between lullabies. The
words often are said to calm a weeping person
and translate to “stop crying.” But to say “tahan
na” is to also say “feel safe,” “feel still,” and “feel
at peace.” Tahanan, the word for “home” in Fili-
pino, is the place where tears subside.

C A R N E G I E H A L L , T H E H I S T O R I C M U S I C V E N U E in Genden, a Mongolian traditional singer and
New York City, developed the Lullaby Project dancer, and grandmother of 13, tells us as she
in 2011. Based on research that lullabies bene- describes “the magic of giving love to your child
fit maternal health, strengthen bonds between through melodies.”
parent and child, and aid child development,
the project fosters collaborations between pro- Bayartai laments the smog that covers Mon-
fessional musicians and new parents to compose golia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, a barrier between
personal lullabies for their babies. Since its incep- herself and her ancestors. “Our ancestors from
tion, the project has helped create thousands of the blue sky must be crying because of the air
lullabies spanning multiple countries, reaching pollution,” she says. “The sky used to be blue.”
mothers and fathers through hospitals, homeless Bayartai sings a lullaby to her newborn grand-
shelters, programs for young mothers, and cor- son. An air purifier hums in the background.
rectional facilities. “We are essentially thinking
of lullabies as an anchor, in very simple terms, for In Ulaanbaatar, one of the world’s coldest
parents to express their personal hopes, dreams, capitals, winter is marked not only by tempera-
and wishes for their children and for themselves,” tures that can reach minus 20 degrees Fahren-
says director of Early Childhood Programs Tiffany heit but also by toxic air. Coal-burning power
Ortiz, who oversees the Lullaby Project. plants and families using coal to heat their
homes cause hazardous levels of air pollution,
“Many mothers will actively talk about using sometimes more than a hundred times the safe
lullaby songs, chants, as a way of reestablishing limit set for fine particulate matter by the World
home,” says Dennie Palmer Wolf, a research con- Health Organization.
sultant for the Lullaby Project. Migrant families
in Greece participated in the Carnegie project, With more than half of Mongolia’s children
and local collaborators describe their lullabies living in Ulaanbaatar, where pneumonia is the
as “portable sanctuaries.”

“Like prayers or traditional stories, you can
carry them anywhere with you,” Palmer Wolf
says. “They take no room in your backpack; you
can always pack them in. It’s a way of establish-
ing continuity where there is almost none.”

L U L L A B I E S R E F L E C T T H E P R E S E N T, but they are
often rooted in the past.

In Mongolia the buuvei lullaby has been sung
by nomads for generations. Its refrain, “buuvei,”
means “don’t fear.” “Love is the most import-
ant thing—passed on like a heritage,” Bayartai

102 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C