POTSDAM -- Great Rivers Center at Clarkson University Director Michael Twiss co-authored a joint report on the environmental status of the St. Lawrence River for presentation at the recent State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference meeting in Erie, Pa.

For the first time since the inception of the SOLEC conference in 1994, the environmental status of the international section of the St. Lawrence River was reported to the Great Lakes community.

Twiss’s co-author was Jeff Ridal, executive director of the St. Lawrence River Institute of Environmental Sciences at Cornwall, Ont.

The joint directors' report summarized the main features of the river and focused on the impacts that tributaries have on this river's shoreline.

"The near shore is an important region," says Twiss. "It's where many people come in contact with the river, for example, at bathing beaches, and it is where tributary waters meet the river."

Topics presented in the report included beach health, mercury contamination in fish, nutrient enrichments, and impact of the hydroelectric power production on eel populations and habitats in the river.

The Great Lakes contain 20 percent of the world's freshwater and are located in the industrial heartland of Canada and United States, where 40 million citizens reside. The St. Lawrence River, which flows from headwaters in Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean, is the natural outlet of the Great Lakes.