The Coevolution of Humankind and Lake Erie: Past, Present, and Future Interactions – The Independent Study project of Natalie Tanner (’24)

Editor’s Note: Independent Study (IS) at The College of Wooster is a three-course series required of every student before graduation. Earth Sciences students typically begin in the second semester of their junior years with project identification, literature review, and a thesis essentially setting out the hypotheses and parameters of the work. Most students do fieldwork or lab work to collect data, and then spend their senior years finishing extensive Senior I.S. theses. Natalie Tanner was advised by Mark Wilson (me!) and Nigel Brush because she was a double major in Environmental Geoscience and Anthropology. The following is her thesis abstract —

This Independent Study fosters a dynamic conversation between the communities and stakeholders of Lake Erie, focusing on the cultural evolution, resource exploitation, and conservation practices behind these interactions. This discussion will suggest how to best implement more effective conservation policies in the Lake Erie watershed by examining the importance of the lake to the ecosystem, the relationship between the lake and surrounding communities, and how stakeholder groups propose conservation efforts to the public. The importance of Lake Erie to the regional environment and hydroclimate cannot be understated. Local communities are not only reliant on the lake for food, water, and recreation, but also its role in maintaining the regional climate and ecosystems. Cultural evolution leads to specific resource exploitation to maintain large populations, in this case, often leading to pollutants entering the lake. Human-sourced pollution dates back to Indigenous agriculture, where archeological evaluations of Indigenous sites and their geologic environments suggest that pre-European contact agriculture would have directly caused an increase of sedimentation in Lake Erie. Today, stakeholder groups hold the power to decide the resource exploitation and conservation efforts applied to Lake Erie. Yet often the communities and stakeholders alike feel their efforts fall short of success.

The contamination of the Lake Erie watershed greatly affects the surrounding
communities, not the stakeholders, and yet the communities are not the ones allotted the power to decide the goals of conservation efforts. Theorist, Carol Carpenter, suggests that without the support and involvement of the communities, implementing effective conservation efforts will not often be successful. This conversation will ideally persuade local stakeholders to conduct policy changes regarding their communication techniques and involvement with the populations living in the Lake Erie watershed. Ultimately encouraging stakeholders to place some of their decision-making power back in the hands of the community members and closing the sociopolitical and socioeconomic gaps that are often so prevalent in conservation today.