Need for harmonized long-term multi-lake monitoring of African Great Lakes

To ensure the long-term sustainable use of African Great Lakes (AGL), and to better understand the func-tioning of these ecosystems, authorities, managers and scientists need regularly collected scientific data and information of key environmental indicators over multi-years to make informed decisions. Monitoring is regularly conducted at some sites across AGL; while at others sites, it is rare or conducted irregularly in response to sporadic funding or short-term projects/studies. Managers and scientists work-ing on the AGL thus often lack critical long-term data to evaluate and gauge ongoing changes. Hence, we propose a multi-lake approach to harmonize data collection modalities for better understanding of regio-nal and global environmental impacts on AGL. Climate variability has had strong impacts on all AGL in the recent past. Although these lakes have specific characteristics, their limnological cycles show many sim-ilarities. Because different anthropogenic pressures take place at the different AGL, harmonized multi -lake monitoring will provide comparable data to address the main drivers of concern (climate versus regional anthropogenic impact). To realize harmonized long-term multi-lake monitoring, the approach will need: (1) support of a wide community of researchers and managers; (2) political goodwill towards a common goal for such monitoring; and (3) sufficient capacity (e.g., institutional, financial, human and logistic resources) for its implementation. This paper presents an assessment of the state of monitoring the AGL and possible approaches to realize a long-term, multi-lake harmonized monitoring strategy. Key parameters are proposed. The support of national and regional authorities is necessary as each AGL crosses international boundaries. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Association for Great Lakes Research. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).