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Great Lakes Nearshore Assessment: What Would Goldilocks Do?
Citation:
Pauer, J., T. Brown, W. Melendez, L. Lowe, AND T. Hollenhorst. Great Lakes Nearshore Assessment: What Would Goldilocks Do? To be Presented at International Association for Great Lakes Research, Detroit, MI, May 15 - 19, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
not applicable
Description:
Concerns with the nearshore water quality of the Great Lakes, such as excessive eutrophication and harmful algal blooms, called for establishing a nearshore monitoring program to gain a better understanding of the watershed-nearshore link. This is challenging, as sporadic runoff events and varying current direction cause the nearshore to be very dynamic and exhibit large spatial and temporal gradients. A comprehensive picture of nearshore water quality using field observations alone would necessitate a prohibitively extensive monitoring network to be designed. Instead, a hybrid approach using moderate monitoring complemented by coastal modeling could be utilized. Existing models range from simplistic models to highly complex formulations of the biogeochemistry and transport evaluated over a fine-scale computational grid. Our approach is to complement field observations with two simple models: a nested transport model with simple nutrient kinetics, and a zero-di mensional eutrophication model with sophisticated kinetic formulations. Although both models have strengths and weaknesses, our results indicate that this hybrid approach has several advantages over either a monitoring only program, or a complicated model with a monitoring program, to efficiently address nearshore water quality and to manage this precious water resource.