¹Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, ON.
²Phytoplankton Canada, 685 Inverary Road, Burlington, ON

   The axe, the plough and the net that accompanied Europeans to North America wrought profound ecological changes in our Laurentian Great Lakes. Forests were harvested and prairies were ploughed. The offal appeared downstream and began the process of adverse environmental change in receiving waters. New canals circumvented the natural barrier at Niagara Falls and the first wave of invaders soon responded. Expansion of commercial fisheries created hundreds of fishing villages. Invasion of sea lampreys coupled with growing exploitation effects caused local extirpation of many native and endemic species. Agricultural expansion, new manufacturing centers and urban growth accelerated the nutrient loading expressed in declining water quality for Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Michigan. Each suffered what must be deemed a severe decline of previous ecosystem goods and services. In combination, this series proceeded from easIt was in the spring of 1976, that a one day symposium on the Upper Great Lakes was organized at the 19th Great Lakes Research Conference held at the University of Guelph. This symposium was very successful in bringing together researchers working on the upper lakes, especially Lake Superior. Encouraged by its success, we initiated a working group called the Upper Lakes Multi-Disciplinary Group (ULM) at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters (CCIW). We met regularly in Burlington, Ontario to assess and review the current research being carried out. These meetings resulted in the development and publication of a special issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research: “Limnology of Lake Superior” (IAGLR, 1978) which I edited. Following this special issue, not much was published about Lake Superior with the exception of a few papers (Munawar et al. 1987; Munawar and Munawar, 2000) which focussed mainly on phycology.
In order to fill in the long gap without information, a “State of Lake Superior” conference was organized by the Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management Society (AEHMS) in the spring of 2002 at Houghton, Michigan. The conference was co-sponsored by Michigan Technological University, the Large Lakes Observatory of the University of Minnesota - Duluth and the U.S. Geological Survey. The meeting was instrumental in bringing together various investigators actively engaged in Lake Superior research. Some of the papers originating from the conference were published in a special issue of the society’s Journal, Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management (AEHMS, 2004). A second group of papers were published in a special issue in the Journal of Great Lakes Research (IAGLR, 2004). The current book is being published by the AEHMS as part of its Ecovision World Monograph Series. The book contains papers which originated from the above conference, but in order to make the book as holistic as possible, additional papers on current topics and issues were solicited. This process was time consuming and onerous, but also necessary, especially considering that this is the first time that a comprehensive, peer-reviewed book on Lake Superior has been attempted.
It is an opportune time to highlight and emphasize here the historical background of the AEHMS’ role and impact in the propagation and coordination of large lakes research, via its journal (Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management) and the monographs (Ecovision World Monograph Series). Initially, the society established a working group called “The Great Lakes of the World-GLOW” to bring together large lakes researchers for exchanging ideas, technology and interactions. Then GLOW embarked on organizing special symposia which resulted in several peer-reviewed books and special issues. In a short period of time of about 15 years, the AEHMS has published 10 peer-reviewed books (Table 1) and 11 special issues of its journal (Table 2).

Table 1. Books published under Ecovision World Monograph Series from 1995-2008.

Book title	Year
The Lake Huron Ecosystem: Ecology, Fisheries and the Management	1995
Phytoplankton Dynamics in the North American Great Lakes, Vol. 1: Lakes Ontario, Erie and St. Clair	1996
The State of Lake Erie Ecosystem (SOLE): Past Present and Future	1999
Phytoplankton Dynamics in the North American Great Lakes, Vol. 2.: Lakes Superior, Michigan, North Channel, Georgian Bay and Lake Huron	2000
The Great Lakes of the World (GLOW): Food-web, Health & Integrity	2001
Ecology, culture and conservation of a protected area: Fathom Five National Marine Park, Canada	2001
State of Lake Ontario(SOLO): Past, Present and Future	2003
State of Lake Michigan (SOLM): Ecology, Health and Management	2005
Checking the Pulse of Lake Erie	2008
State of Lake Superior	2008

Table 2. Special issues of the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Journal 2000-2009.

Special Issue title	Volume	Year
Large Lakes of the World: Comparative Ecology	Vol 3 (1)	2000
Ecosystem Health of Lake Baikal, Russia	Vol 3 (2)	2000
Great Lakes of the World: Food Web, Fisheries, and Management	Vol 5 (3)	2002
Comparing Great Lakes of the World	Vol 6 (3)	2003
Coastal Wetlands of the Laurentian Great Lakes: Health, Integrity and Management	Vol 7 (2)	2004
Emerging Issues in Lake Superior Research	Vol 7 (4)	2004
Great Lake Victoria Fisheries: Changes, Sustainability, and Building Blocks for Management	Vol 10 (4)	2007
Changing Great Lakes of the World (GLOW IV)	Vol 11 (1)	2008
State of Lake Huron: Ecosystem Change, Habitat, and Management, Part I	Vol 11 (2)	2008
Checking the Pulse of Lake Ontario	Vol 11 (4)	2008
The State of Lake Huron: Ecosystem Change, Habitat and Management, Part II	Vol 12 (1)	2009

We take this opportunity to thank the following colleagues who assisted in various aspects of the development of this monograph:

Susan Blunt, Joanne Dziuba, Tom Edsall, Mark Fitzpatrick, Joe Leach, Jennifer Lorimer, Ed Mills, Nabila Munawar and Heather Niblock. Finally, we are grateful to Drs. Henry Regier and James Kitchell for providing valuable insights through their foreword and preface.
The “State of Lake Superior” monograph is a culmination of a dream to produce high quality, peer-reviewed books on each of the Laurentian Great Lakes. This book on Lake Superior completes the cycle. The popularity and success of these books has led to the initiation of special issues of AEHM dedicated to large lakes research which have also been well received by the large lakes community. We hope that the “State of Lake Superior” monograph will be a landmark publication useful for scientists, managers and students in their research and facilitate the conservation of this world resource.