NEWS NOTES ON SUSTAINABLE WATER RESOURCES Ecological Water Stress in the Great Lakes Alian, Sara, CHARACTERIZATION OF ECOLOGICAL WATER STRESS IN THE U.S. GREAT LAKES REGION USING A GEOSPATIAL MODELING APPROACH , Open Access Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2017. http://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr/401 ; http://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1494&context=etdr ; Anthropocentric water resources management affects aquatic habitats by changingstream flow regime. Understanding the impacts of water withdrawal from different sources and consumption by various economic sectors at different spatial and temporal scales is key to characterizing ecologically harmful stream flow disturbances. To this end, we developed a generic, integrative framework to characterize catchment scale water stress at annual and monthly time scales. The framework accounts for spatially cumulative consumptive and non-consumptive use impacts and associated changes in flow due to depletion and return flow along the stream network. Application of the framework to the U.S. Great Lakes Region indicates that a significant number of catchments experience negative water stress due to stream flow depletion caused by surface water and shallow groundwater withdrawals. In many other catchments, however, return flow from deep groundwater withdrawals compensates for the stream flow depletion to the extent that positive water stress is likely. Results illustrate the importance of using appropriate spatial and temporal scales to evaluate water stress, demonstrating that coarse temporal (i.e., annual vs. monthly) and spatial scales reduce the ability to detect water stress due to water withdrawals in vulnerable catchments in low-flow months. This study will also be linked on the 2017 Reports and Publications Page of the Sustainable Water Resources Site at https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablewaterresources/ ">https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablewaterresources/ ; Tim SmithSustainable Water Resources CoordinatorGovernment Web Site, https://acwi.gov/Sustainable Water Resources Site, https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablewaterresources/ ">https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablewaterresources/ ;