Other groups have been working on Great Lakes environmental indicators. The greatest coordination on Great Lakes indicator development has come from SOLEC. SOLEC (the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference) initially identified over 800 potential indicators; now these 800 have been reduced to the 80 most useful and feasible indicators.

SOLEC indicators are designed to report the state of the whole Great Lakes basin. The indicators are developed using the Pressure-State-Response model: SOLEC has identified indicators about the State of the ecosystem and about the Pressures (stressors) that affect that ecosystem state. Where appropriate, SOLEC looks at the human activites that affect the stressors, but the primary focus is on the state (response) and pressure (stressor) indicators.