Final Canadian data and information catalogue

A decade ago scientists working on the Great Lakes were faced with the hard fact that some of their problems were so large and so complex that ultimate solutions would only be obtainable through a concentrated and well coordinated international undertaking. As a result, the concept of a very large and comprehensive international interdisciplinary program, - later to be called the International Field Year for the Great Lakes, was explored by an ad hoc group of the United States and Canadian National Committees for the International Hydrological Decade (IHD). At the time, the IHD was an active scientific program consisting of concentrated and cooperative studies of water resource problems of more than 100 nations of the world. It was sponsored by the United Nations, with Unesco taking the coordinating role and covered the period from 1965 to 1974. The National Committees soon adopted the idea of IFYGL as being appropriate to their goals, and in 1966 an International Steering Committee was established consisting of four senior scientists from each Lake Ontario was chosen as the lake to be studied on the basis of the need for scientific information, public interest, the representativeness of the lake, the likely quality of the data, logistics and operating costs.