Refining a tributary monitoring program for the Great Lakes basin

Differences in environmental priorities and goals has resulted in poor continuity of data collection, analysis, and reporting techniques between programs. Thus, integration of different data sets may result in erroneous conclusions. The integration of data from these many monitoring programs into a comprehensive environmental assessment framework is important for the future management of water resources. This paper uses specific examples from a river in southern Ontario, Canada to discuss important fundamental scientific questions which must first be addressed, and the many field and analytical methods which must be standardized before such an integration can occur. -from Authors