|
The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) is an internationally unique research station encompassing 58 formerly pristine freshwater lakes in Kenora District Ontario, Canada. Previously run by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the facility is now managed and operated by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and has a mandate to investigate the aquatic effects of a wide variety of stresses on lakes and their catchments. The ELA uses the whole ecosystem approach and makes long-term, whole-lake investigations of freshwater focusing on eutrophication. In an article published in AAAS's well-known scientific journal ''Science,'' Eric Stokstad described ELA's "extreme science" as the manipulation of whole lake ecosystem with ELA researchers collecting long-term records for climatology, hydrology, and limnology that address key issues in water management. The ELA has influenced public policy in water management in Canada, the USA and Europe. Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, argued that "our government has been working hard to ensure that the Experimental Lakes Area facility is transferred to a non-governmental operator better suited to conducting the type of world-class research that can be undertaken at this facility” and that “()he federal government has been leading negotiations in order to secure an operator with an international track record." On April 1, 2014, the International Institute for Sustainable Development announced that it had signed three agreements to ensure that it will be the long-term operator of the ELA research facility. == History == In 1968, the Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada set aside an area in a sparsely inhabited region of central Canada, southeast of Kenora, Ontario, which is relatively unaffected by external human influences and industrial activities, for experimental studies of the causes and control of eutrophication and other types of water pollution. It included 46 small, deep, pristine lakes and their catchment areas in the Precambrian Shield. The ELA project originated as a Canadian governmental response to the International Joint Commission (IJC)'s recommendation (1965) to Canada and the United States for additional support for studies on transboundary pollution in the lower Great Lakes. In the 1960s, there was a widespread concern about the consequences of eutrophication but there was a lack of solid scientific evidence. Dr. W. E. Johnson of the Freshwater Institute of Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) convinced the Canadian government that unimpeachable evidence could be obtained by experimental pollution of pristine lakes through controlled overfertilization of specified elements. The Experimental Lakes Area was established in 1968 by the Fisheries Research Board of Canada. Dr. John Reubec Vallentyne and Dr. W. E. Johnson of the Freshwater Institute created the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA). While Vallentyne was Scientific Leader of the Eutrophication Section from 1966 to 1972, he attracted a stellar staff of scientists from around the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He recruited a junior scientist, David W. Schindler. Schindler, who would become one of the world's leading limnologists, would direct ELA projects from 1968 to 1989. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Experimental Lakes Area」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|