Great Lakes Diatoms website

Abstract

On November 27, 1995, the Great Lakes Diatoms website was published at the University of Michigan. At the time, I was tasked with constructing the website based on Dr. Stoermer’s card file system of Great Lakes diatom taxa identified and studied in his laboratory for over 25 years. I was one of Dr. Stoermer’s graduate students, and subsequently, was a research scientist at the University of Michigan for many years where I studied diatoms and limnology as well. Some of the diatom taxa in the website are unique to the Great Lakes, while others are found worldwide. The website is a compendium of Great Lakes diatom digital images and associated morphological and locality data that has been valuable to limnologists, taxonomists, systematists, phylogeneticists as well as citizen scientists and the public. Such information is an aid in furthering our understanding of diatoms as an important component of Great Lakes food webs and ecosystems. Because diatoms are important in biogeochemical cycles and carbon sequestration, they have been called one of the “directors of our future.” Diatoms play an important role as environmental indicators in water systems, and water quality assessment is dependent on diatom taxonomic status, so that the Great Lakes Diatoms website provides an avenue toward this goal.