A new report says fish and wildlife in the Lake Superior basin face a looming climate crisis.

The National Wildlife Federation in the U.S. says radical change is ahead for the world’s largest freshwater lake because it's heating up rapidly. The overarching theme of the report, called "Wildlife in a Warming World: Confronting the Climate Crisis," is that climate change is the biggest threat wildlife will face this century.

TRAVERSE CITY — Toxic algae blooms on Lake Erie may form more often unless farms and cities do a better job of controlling runoff of nutrients that feed them, a scientist said Tuesday as specialists developed proposals for confronting the threat.

About 40 experts met for two days in Windsor, Ontario, to compare research findings about the lake's struggles with algae and work on a report for government policymakers. The gathering was convened by the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that advises both nations on issues affecting shared waterways.

The increased carbon dioxide changing the water chemistry and ecology of oceans may also be affecting freshwater and the organisms that live in it.

It’s called ocean acidification. But some researchers suspect it will impact the Great Lakes.

“Based on our preliminary modeling and understanding of carbon cycles, we think similar acidification trends will take place in the Great Lakes to the degree that researchers are expecting in the oceans,” said Galen McKinley, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin.

When Scandia, a Norwegian wind company, announced its plans to install 200 turbines in Lake Michigan four miles from the tourist town of Ludington, Michigan, in 2009, they likely didn’t anticipate the controversy that would erupt.

After all, the project would be delivering domestically produced renewable energy to replace planet-warming fossil fuels. It would create local jobs installing and operating the turbines. A nearby pumped-hydro facility for storing backup energy sat in the nearby dunes, complete with substations and high-voltage lines they could use to move electricity from their offshore turbines to the grid.