THE GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH
RESEARCH INSTITUTES

1.7.1 THE GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE

Situated on a major international boundary and trade route, the Great Lakes Institute (GLI) is in the heart of the world’s most significant freshwater system. The Institute is a unique hub that hosts five major multi-disciplinary groups that carry out world-class international research on sustaining our natural, economic and social environments. These groups have access to campus-wide facilities, as well as a dedicated 56 000 ft2 (5200 m2) building situated on the water that hosts a very extensive range of new, well-equipped laboratories, accredited analytical facilities, meeting rooms and offices.

Established in 1981, GLI is now undergoing a period of explosive development, recruiting additional faculty, and building new research endeavours and new opportunities for graduate education.

GLI exists to foster interdisciplinary research on the human impacts on environments, and the consequences and challenges of those impacts to quality of life. The earth’s environments are changing rapidly in a number of ways due to human impacts. These include pollution of soils, water and air, mismanagement of coastlines and natural resources such as fisheries and forests, climate change, reduction and division of natural habitats, biodiversity loss, invasions by new species, and unintended genetic modifications of natural populations.

GLI focuses on how to assess, understand, remedy and above all prevent, these impacts through better scientific understanding of the nature and functioning of natural systems, and how our actions affect them. To do this requires full involvement of the health and social sciences, law, economics, architecture, planning, ethics and the humanities in order to provide coordinated research into practical systems that allow for sustainable development that not only protects the natural environment, but also enhances the social and economic fabric of the communities that inhabit it.

Further details of this important Research Institute are at www.gli.windsor.ca.