The Great Lakes shoreline is home to more than 1200 public beaches that draw millions of visitors each year. Impacts of coastal recreational use include:

• Increased traffic to coastal areas
• Potential pollution caused by recreational use, such as litter
• Activities associated with beach management, such as beach grooming

Mapping coastal recreational use as a Great Lakes stressor

• Canadian beach location points were provided by Environment Canada
• U.S. beach locations were obtained from the U.S. EPA BEACH Act Geospatial Database. We converted beach segments to points using the midpoint.
• The analysis includes beaches located within 1 km of the shoreline
• We created 1 km buffer around each point to estimate the in-lake area affected by coastal recreation.

Distribution of coastal recreational use as a stressor in the Laurentian Great Lakes (Inset: Western Lake Erie).