The World's Greatest Freshwater System

People who live around the Great Lakes often take them for granted. I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes, to give people enough information to make intelligent choices in their every day lives about the world’s greatest freshwater system. The Dynamic Great Lakes is a book about their ecology and the mistakes people have made when altering the landscape by making locks for shipping, destroying wetlands or introducing new species both intentionally and unintentionally. It was my aim in writing this book to make people appreciate these lakes and understand what they might do for their betterment.

Many people do not understand the significance of the Great Lakes. They are twenty per cent of the world’s fresh surface water and need to be protected. These lakes’ freshwater will be hotly contested as more and more industries and people in arid parts of the world would like to exploit them. It is indeed happening now. Some large freshwater lakes in the world have been destroyed—drawn down to nothing through a lack of understanding.

Bottling plants have their eyes on the Great Lakes. Bottling water and shipping it out of the watershed will destroy the integrity of the lakes and their unique ecosystems. People in the Great Lakes watershed argue that the water belongs to the commons and should not be sold for private profit. There are many more issues the book addresses: directional drilling for oil, nuclear power plants, exotic species, wetlands, sand dunes and pollution from industries and municipalities.