资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

As summer continues to wind down, Lake Erie biological activity, fueled by nutrients from rivers and tributaries, goes into high gear. This activity, in turn, causes the oxygen depletion (hypoxia) in the depths of the lake’s Central Basin. However, the story does not end there. Wind-driven water circulation patterns can move this deep water into the shallow areas of the lake where the intakes for water treatment plants continuously draw the water that sustains the local residents.

Experimental Lake Erie Hypoxia Forecast example. Credit. M. Rowe, NOAA GLERL.

Treatment plant operators have to respond quickly when low oxygen water reaches the intakes to ensure continued delivery of clean, safe water. However, not knowing when the hypoxia event can happen leaves them vulnerable. To remedy this problem, the NCCOS Coastal Hypoxia Research Program (CHRP) supports a collaborative project between the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) and Cleveland Water to model when and where the low oxygen is located.

Since 2017 the project has provided an experimental forecast to show at a glance when a hypoxic upwelling event will occur within days. Project scientists provide an email update to public water systems, resource managers, and other researchers with links to the experimental forecast website, the National Weather Service marine forecast, and information on real time water oxygen observations though the Great Lakes Observing System.

“This most recent forecast continues proving hypoxic events can be predicted, predictions are becoming more and more accurate, and these predictions are definitely useful. I see the prediction of this hypoxic event as continued justification for the usefulness of the hypoxia forecast model, and continue getting more and more comfortable with using this model as a routine tool to evaluate source water quality and treatment needs for our four water plants” said Scott Moegling, Water Quality Manager at Cleveland Water.