The Lakes

IAGLR members mainly conduct and use research on North America's Great Lakes: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario. These lakes are extraordinary places, containing more than one-fifth of the surface fresh water on our planet. Their waters support the world's largest freshwater commercial fishery and supply drinking water to millions of Canadians and Americans living along their 10,900 miles of coastline.

IAGLR is not interested in only these five lakes, however. Our interests extend to other large lakes of the world, such as Lake Baikal in Russia, an incredibly deep lake that contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined! In 1998, IAGLR hosted a symposium on the Great Lakes of Africa at our annual conference. The African Great Lakes include Lake Victoria, the world's 3rd largest lake. The African lakes also contain an incredible diversity of fishes, including hundreds of species of a single group of fish called the cichlids (pronounced sick-lids). By comparison, fewer than 200 species of fish of all kinds occupy North America's Great Lakes.

To learn more about research on the large lakes of the world, check out our research page and our journal. Or plan to come to our next conference.

For more information about the Laurentian Great Lakes, see GLIN's The Great Lakes.