The Fourth Annual International Lake of the Woods Water Quality Forum last week offered a place for researchers from Canada and the United States involved in projects on the watershed to share information. That's what Todd J. Sellers, executive director of the Lake of the Woods Water Sustainability Foundation, of Kenora, sees as one of the values of the annual forum conducted Wednesday and Thursday at Rainy River Community College. About 90 researchers with federal, state and provincial agencies from Canada and the U.S. attended the conference.

"It gives them a forum where they can talk about cooperative and collaborative research projects," Sellers said Thursday.

"We share this lake. Water doesn't respect international boundaries. So it's important that both the research is done collaboratively across the border and any activities that are needed to protect the lake are done in cooperation by everybody around the basin."

The establishment of the annual forum has gone a long way to build that spirit of cooperation, Sellers noted.
The forum grew from the recognition that a lot of agencies and individuals on both sides of the border were monitoring rivers, fisheries and algae in the lake. "They had never really been dragged together in one room, at one place, at one time," he said. "The forum has grown every year."

Earlier forums spawned a number of collaborative research projects, Sellers said. "A couple of projects were just started this year," he said. "One is what we're calling the state of the basin report, which will develop a baseline assessment of where the lake is today, what we know about the lake, and also what we don't know - where there is information needed to help protect and sustain the quality of the lake." The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the foundation, and Environment Canada are taking part in that project. "That's a huge, good, news story that we've got multiple levels of government and government agencies on both sides of the border cooperating around the common cause of this great lake," Sellers said.

Many topics discussed at the forum were relevant to the concerns of the area. Among the presenters was Larry Kallemeyn, a fish biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey based at Voyageurs National Park. Kallemeyn discussed the status of mercury in fish within the park area, which has been monitored since 1971. Lake Kabetogama, he noted, continues to show the lowest concentration of mercury in fish in the lakes monitored within the park. He pointed to what appears to be a correlation between water levels and mercury levels in young-of-the-year perch. "The punch line is that it's not a good news ending," he told the group gathered at the college Thursday. "(The levels are) either flat or increasing." Kallemeyn's presentation was followed by an update on the influence of prescribed forest fire on the remobilization of mercury in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness presented by Trent Wickman of the Superior National Forest.

Matthew L. Julius, a teacher in the biology department at St. Cloud State University, discussed service learning partnerships as a model for enhancing biological monitoring efforts with Voyageurs National Park. Julius noted that projects get students out into the field for relevant career work while benefiting the environment and other agencies. The work is low cost and allows students to generate real data that helps resource managers to make decisions.