Engagement of community science (volunteer monitoring by non-expert residents) represents an important opportunity to expand our regional data collection capacity and address pressing water quality challenges like HABs.Often these stations are maintained by individual research institutions or local municipalities, but a few entities are beginning to aggregate that data and serve it up for broader use. In-situ monitoring with high-frequency sensors or auto-samplers is a great opportunity to collect robust water quality information at stations of particular interest.Can you establish links between existing data sets that help us improve location and/or performance of mitigation strategies around stormwater runoff, nutrient pollution, and/or harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie and its watersheds?.Can you build an application that visualizes existing data sets to help us better understand the dynamics of stormwater runoff, nutrient pollution, and/or harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie and its watersheds?.These challenges synergize to produce both significant need for and significant limitations on project-based water quality data collected across Lake Erie and its watersheds. Further, reduced budget allocations in Michigan, Ohio, and New York are challenging the scope and sustainability of agency water monitoring programs more broadly.
States are increasingly investing in wetland restoration and agricultural management solutions to reduce the nutrient pollution in these areas, but often don’t have enough information to strategically locate these projects, evaluate their effectiveness, or optimize their performance.
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lawn fertilizers, wastewater systems and combined sewer overflows) exist, current science strongly suggests that agricultural runoff (fertilizer from corn and soy fields with some animal waste contribution from cow and hog feeding operations) originating across a number of watersheds in Western Ohio and Southeast Michigan is the primary driver for the seasonal Western/Central Basin HAB, the Central Basin Dead Zone (another side effect of excessive P + N loading) and legacy nutrient buildup in sediment across the Lake Erie watershed. While individual and municipal contributions to nutrient loading (e.g. This annual ecological crisis puts the health and wellbeing of communities that rely on our Great Lake for their drinking water, recreation, or livelihood at risk.
As human land use and climate change-driven weather events have intensified, seasonal surges and legacy deposits of nutrient pollution have grown to make Lake Erie the epicenter of a yearly HAB which can be seen from space. Also known as “Blue Green Algae” this organism is actually a bacteria which can range from a minor nuisance that temporarily interrupts water-based recreation to a massive toxic bloom that chokes the Western and Central Basins of Lake Erie, disrupting drinking water supplies and killing wildlife. Excessive nutrient loads from human activities lead to the growth of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). Phosphorus and nitrogen are essential elements for the growth of all life, but when large quantities of these nutrients are added to a surface water from external sources they pose a serious threat to ecosystem health and integrity.
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