There is new data that shows that climate change is having a noticeable impact on water levels in the Great Lakes.
Matt Hoy, executive director of the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation, says water levels have always been cyclical, but climate change has accelerate that change so that what may have been a ten-year cycle in the past, is now a five or six year cycle.
Hoy points out that can be a good thing for some people in providing more sandy beach during low levels or making shipping easier during high level periods. But one of the greatest concerns is that during high level periods, some property owners have been tempted to pull out beach grasses in an attempt to re-claim some of their beach.
He says that's the worst thing they can do because that plant life acts as a filter for the lake and helps to clean the water that runs into it.
Hoy says the cycles are nature's way of correcting what's going on within the dynamics of the Great Lakes and the best thing we can do is adjust to the cycles.
Meanwhile, the Lake Huron Centre will soon start advertising for a new executive director.
Matt Hoy announced this week that he is leaving the Centre, to take a position with the Maitland Valley Family Health Team.