Modelling the environmental factors that control the occurrence of algal blooms in Lake Erie

Nuisance and harmful algal blooms represent a growing major threat to water security across Canada and the world, because of their undesirable ecological, economic, and health impacts. This project aims to strengthen the predictive understanding and forecasting of the timing, spatial extent, and intensity of algal blooms of large lakes in cold regions. Lake Erie will be the focus of this project; with the internal phosphorus loading and climate change as key considerations for sustaining algal blooms. Note, that this research is part of the CERC Ecohydrology Program funded by Canada Excellence Research Chair and the “Lake Futures: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity and Resilience of Lakes and Their Watersheds: Work Package 2". Lake Futures is a Pillar 3 project under the Global Water Futures (GWF) Program funded by Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF).

The observed algal distributions will be related to environmental drivers, including: inland (precipitation and river discharge) and lake (ice cover, temperature, wind speed, solar radiation) hydrometeorological forcings, nutrient sources, light penetration, water quality (conductivity, water colour, dissolved organic carbon, nutrients), and circulation patterns. All input data for the lake models will be collected from online via US Environmental Protection Agency and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) databases. Statistical relationships will be identified using multivariate analyses, and Bayesian probabilistic modeling. Neural network models will be used to identify the drivers that best predict the initiation and proliferation of algal blooms in Lake Erie.

Van Cappellen, P., Markelov, I., and Kheyrollah Pour, H. (2019). Modelling the environmental factors that control the occurrence of algal blooms in Lake Erie. Waterloo, Canada: Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN). Unpublished Data.

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