NOAA Great Lakes Seminar Series: 2004 Past Seminars

Thursday
December 16

Title: "Modeling of Ballast Water Flow Dynamics in Ballast Tanks During Ballast Water Exchange"

Speaker: Dr. David Reid, Research Physical Scientist, Aquatic Invasive Species Task Leader, GLERL

Abstract: Mid-ocean ballast water exchange (BWE) is presently the primary management practice for reducing or preventing the spread of nonindigenous aquatic species via ballast water. While ballast exchange by itself may not be a permanent long-term solution, it likely will continue to be the primary approach used for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is essential to fully understand the ballast exchange process and what occurs inside a ballast tank during exchange. Experimental determination of the effectiveness of BWE is difficult due to the complex structure and inaccessible location of typical ballast tanks. These difficulties limit the experimental design and resolution of sampling during ballast water exchange experiments – generally one can determine starting conditions, what goes in, and what comes out of the tank, but details about water flow and mixing throughout the tank during exchange are unavailable. This presentation describes progress towards the development and validation of a high-resolution computer-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the mixing and flows in a ballast tank during ballast water exchange. The CFD model was built and grided based on the ballast tank architecture of an oceanic bulk carrier in Great Lakes trade. A small-scale physical model of part of the ballast tank was constructed to obtain experimental data needed to calibrate and validate the CFD model. The CFD model has been calibrated and run for three-tank-volume exchange in a four-cell section of the 20-cell ballast tank and these results will be presented. Ultimately, a CFD model of a three-tank-volume exchange for the entire 20-cell tank will be produced.

Video available on CD by request. Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Thursday
December 9

Speaker: Dmitry V. Pozdnyakov, Research Director
Nansen International Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, St. Petersburg, Russia

Thursday
November 18

Title: "An Examination of Winds and Waves on Lake Superior Associated with the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975"

Speaker: Dr. David Schwab, Physical Limnologist, GLERL

Abstract:
The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) version 4.4 was used to simulate atmospheric conditions over Lake Superior during the storm associated with the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. The run spanned 54 hours, from 00Z, 9 November 1975 – 06Z, 11 November 1975. The NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis was used for initial and boundary conditions for the run. The RAMS model had 6-hour temporal resolution, grid spacing of 2.5° x 2.5°, and 17 vertical levels. The sinking of the Fitzgerald occurred approximately 48 hours into the model run, at 0015Z, 11 November 1975. Since there were almost no wave observations in Lake Superior at this time, computer model simulations of the case have also been run using the GLERL/Donelan wave model to estimate the possible wave conditions experienced during the time of the Fitzgerald’s sinking. A computer animation of the results shows an area of waves with maximum significant waveheight greater than 7.5 m occurred in eastern Lake Superior at almost exactly the time the Fitzgerald was lost. From the meteorological simulation and the wave model run, it appears that the Fitzgerald could not have been in a worse place at a worse time.

Video available on CD by request. Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Wednesday
November 10

Title: "Bayesian Methods in Ecological Forecasting"

Speaker: Dr. E. Conrad Lamon III
Asst. Prof., Dept of Environmental Studies, Louisiana State University

Abstract: I will summarize some key aspects of the Bayesian paradigm, then describe various applications of this approach in my research and how this approach may be useful here at GLERL. The list of contrasts between the Bayesian and frequentist approach to inference is long. Perhaps one of the most important in terms of adaptive ecosystem management is that Bayesian methods provide proper probability distributions on the variable of interest, one of the two key portions of the risk equations in decision theory. I will provide several examples illustrating the advantages of Bayesian inference in ecological decision making, including Bayesian forecasting and retrospective analyses using Dynamic Linear Models, Bayesian Model Averaging for model specification searches and ensemble forecasting, and Bayesian alternatives to familiar tree based methods. I then outline in broad terms the advantages of Bayesian Hierarchical methods for linking multiple ecological process models.

Tuesday
November 9

Title: "The Northwest Fisheries Science Center and NOAA's West Coast Center for Oceans and Human Health"

Speaker: Dr. Usha Varanasi
Director, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, WA

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Wednesday
November 3

Title: "A National Testbed for Hydrometeorological Development"

Speakers: Steve Vasiloff, Meteorologist, Group Leader for Hydrometeorological Applications, and
Ken Howard, Meteorologist, Project Development
NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, Oklahoma

Abstract: The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), in collaboration with the NWS Office of Hydrologic Development, is currently establishing a national hydrometeorological test bed for the research and development of multi-sensor precipitation applications. A key component of the test bed is the National Mosaic and Quantitative precipitation estimation (NMQ) system. The NMQ will allow the creation and deployment of high-resolution quantitative precipitation estimation applications over North America for flash flood detection and prediction, fresh water resource management. The NMQ project will function as a community based research and development program that encompasses integration of multiple observational data streams, prototype and technique development environment, and real time verification and performance assessments on a national scale across small time and space resolutions. The NMQ system will capitalize on the rapid real-time communication of base-level WSR-88D radar data, satellite, surface, and NWP data, with the addition of Canadian radar data. The NMQ system will utilize two high performance Linux computer clusters connected to a large bandwidth data hub. One cluster will serve as a development and testing platform within a Joint Applications Development Environment (JADE) that will allow field personal, university researchers and NOAA scientists to develop and assess, in real time, new QPE and short-term QPF techniques. The second cluster (currently deployed) is considered to be a pseudo-operational environment providing QPE products with a minimum resolution of 1 km updated every 5-10 minutes seamlessly across the CONUS. The seminar will provide an overview of the objectives as well as the current capabilities, techniques and products being generated as part of the NMQ project. Specifically, NMQ products will be made available to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in real-time. NSSL and GLERL scientists have plans to collaborate to fine-tune precipitation estimates for application to Great Lakes forecast models.

Tuesday
October 26

Speaker: Dr. Peter Rochford, Spectral Sciences Inc.
Burlington, MA

Abstract: A 9-component ecosystem model incorporated into a regional ocean circulation model is used to examine coupled bio-physical processes within the California Current System (CCS). The circulation model is the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) developed at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and it encompasses the region 30°N-50°N and 115°W-135°W at a horizontal grid resolution of 8-10 km. It employs a sigma coordinate with 30 levels in the vertical. The CCS NCOM is remotely forced along its open lateral boundaries by daily forecasts from the NRL global NCOM nowcast/forecast system. The biological model, a 9-component ecosystem formulation originally developed for the equatorial Pacific upwelling system, includes three nutrients (silicate, nitrate, and ammonia), two phytoplankton groups, two zooplankton grazers, and two detrital pools. Results are presented from CCS NCOM simulations generated using surface forcing of high temporal frequency from a mesoscale atmospheric model (COAMPS). The simulations reveal the physical and biological response of the CCS to the high-resolution wind forcing. This enables the importance of horizontal advection and upwelling on ecosystem evolution to be investigated. In-situ bio-optical observations from the MBARI M1 mooring in Monterey Bay, California, for the period 1999-2000 provide an objective measure by which to assess the validity of the model results.

Thursday
October 21

Title: "Ramblings About Algae in the Great Lakes"

Speaker: Dr. Gary Fahnenstiel, Research Ecologist, GLERL

Tuesday
October 19

Speaker: Tomas Höök, Doctoral Candidate, University of Michigan

Abstract: The identification and subsequent protection of essential fish habitats (areas with high densities, growth, survival, and/or production rates) can help sustain fish populations. Unfortunately, the identification of such habitats is complicated by factors such as lack of data, temporal variation, and lack of understanding of the linkage between habitat and fish production. Alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus) in Lake Michigan spawn in a variety of habitats, including near-shore areas, drowned river mouth lakes, embayments, and tributaries. However, the relative contributions of these different nursery habitats to the adult alewife population have not been evaluated. We used a suite of methods to identify critical habitats for young alewives. We integrated bioenergetics models with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to generate spatially-explicit estimates of potential population production in near-shore areas of Lake Michigan. During 2001 and 2002, we sampled age-0 alewives in a near-shore zone and three drowned river mouth lakes. We characterized physical and biotic habitat characteristics and related these to habitat-specific alewife densities, hatch dates, growth, mortality, and production rates. Finally, we used an individual-based model to estimate inter-annual variation in the ultimate recruitment success (survival through the winter) of alewife cohorts emerging in different habitats. Our studies suggest that relative contributions of young alewives from different habitat types vary annually. However, drowned river mouth lakes appear to consistently yield a disproportionately high number of recruits, relative to their volumes.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Thursday
September 16

Title: "Spatial Modeling of Fish Growth Rate and Predator-Prey Interactions"

Speaker: Dr. Stephen Brandt, Director, GLERL

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Tuesday
June 29

10:30 am

Title: "Compartments in Food Webs: How they Help Quantify Structural Changes in the Food Web of Southeastern Lake Michigan after the Invasion of Zebra Mussels and Bythotrephes"

Speaker: Ann Krause, Doctoral Candidate, Michigan State University

Abstract:
Compartments in food webs are subgroups of taxa that have many strong interactions with other compartment members; there are few weak interactions between compartments. Compartmentalization increases stability in theoretical food webs, thus it is necessary to understand compartmentalization in empirical food webs and its role as a stabilizing feature in food-web structure. A method from social networking science was used to identify compartments in five established food webs. Three of the five were significantly compartmentalized (a = 0.05). A graphical representation of the food web provided an intuitive understanding of the compartmental structure. This approach was then applied to the food web of southeastern Lake Michigan to determine changes the food-web structure after zebra mussels and Bythotrephes invaded. Data from GLERL, EPA, GLSC, and the Cook Power Plant study were the primary sources of information for constructing the food web. Additional changes in the structure were estimated by calculating the effectiveness of the interactions between taxa and the effectiveness of taxa within the food web and its compartments. These indices help to determine if a few taxa dominate the food web structure.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Thursday
June 17

Title: "Sedimentary Signatures of Particle Transport and Sorting in Southern Lake Michigan"

Speaker: Dr. John Robbins, Physicist, GLERL

Abstract:
For the past several thousand years, fine grained sediments have preferentially accumulated along the eastern side of Lake Michigan, although source materials originate mainly from erosion of bluffs on the lake's western side. This highly focused, asymmetric build-up is particularly evident in the southern part of the lake, where an area of quite limited extent (< 1000 km2), located circa 20 km offshore near Benton Harbor (HiDep) has the highest rate of sediment accumulation in the entire lake. Recent studies (EEGLE program) suggest that focusing of fine particles (and associated contaminants) is accomplished by late winter wind-driven resuspension events that move huge quantities of sediment eastward around the southern margin of the lake toward the HiDep area. In this talk, I shall demonstrate the unusual character of this area, examine the horizontal and vertical properties of sediments, discuss the historical records they possess (which reflect effects of energetic currents), show maps of the focusing of fallout and cosmogenic radionuclides, follow model contaminant removal times from the HiDep area across the lake, and illustrate the evolution of nuclear fallout building up in Lake Michigan sediments during the past 50 years.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Thursday
June 10

Speaker: Dr. Steven F. Daly, Research Hydraulic Engineer
Cold Regions Research and Engineering Center, Hanover, NH

Abstract:
Water intakes in the Great Lakes are located in the nearshore zones of the lakes, highly active areas that are well mixed by wind, waves and currents. Water intakes must operate without interruption throughout the winter in the nearshore zone. Unfortunately, despite their location on the lake bottoms, intakes are subject to the periodic accumulation of frazil ice on their trash racks, which blocks the flow of water and leads to plant shutdown, and to impacts by pressure ridges, which damage the intake structure. This presentation describes the process of frazil ice formation in the nearshore of the Great Lakes and its impact on water intake operations. It reviews case histories of plant shutdowns caused by ice and focuses in on what is known and not known about ice and intake operations.

Thursday May 20

Speaker: Dr. David Raikow, Biologist, NOAA National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species/GLERL

Abstract
Although the history of biological invasions in the Great Lakes extends back nearly 200 years, the study and management of invasions is much younger. Biological invasions were first truly recognized and studied in the 1950’s when the impact of the Sea Lamprey became too large to ignore and the search for an effective lampricide began. Decimation of the top food web trophic levels by Sea Lamprey released another invader, the Alewife, from predation pressure. Large die-offs of Alewife prompted the creation of a sport fishery using other nonindigenous species. But it took the discovery of the zebra mussel in the 1980’s to push biological invasions in the Great Lakes, and indeed invasion biology as a whole, into the spotlight. Scientific efforts concerning invasions accelerated. The first real legislation concerning aquatic biological invasions passed. The public finally realized the importance of biological invasion as an environmental issue. Today invasion biology and management in the Great Lakes is a thriving concern with many new avenues of research including prediction, prevention, early detection, rapid response, parameter quantification, and international cooperation. New scientific methods and discoveries, however, are only just barely keeping up with new invasions, showing that biological invasion in the Great Lakes is a juggernaut with no end in sight.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Title: "Lacustrine organic matter bulk and isotopic markers of environmental processes and paleoenvironmental changes: Examples from Lagoa do Caço (Maranhão State, Brazil)."

Speaker: Dr. Abdel Sifeddine, Paléotropique. UR 055.
IRD: Institut de Recherche pour le Développement. France

Abstract:
Organic matter is important to the reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes from lacustrine sediments. Organic matter and its allochtonous and autochtonous fractions provide information about the evolution of ecosystems in the lake catchment and in the sedimentation basin and about physical and chemical water column conditions. Most studies that use organic matter as a marker of paleoenvironmental changes have been limited in their interpretations to descriptions of relative evolution. We present results of our study of recent sedimentation of lacustrine organic proxies and the application of these results to improved reconstruction of past environmental changes in Lagoa do Caço, Brazil. We measured organic C/N ratios, δ¹³C‰ and δ¹⁵N‰ values of surficial sediments collected along four transverse transects and one longitudinal transect in this lake. Each transverse profile starts from a margin characterized by emergent macrophytes, crosses the central part of the lake and finishes in the other margin of the lake. The bulk and isotopic results characterise the different depth zones of the Caço lake and identify the processes that control variations of bulk and isotopic parameters of organic matter in Lagoa do Caço. Generally, along each transect, these parameters show in the marginal zone a gradient between 0 to 4 meters decreasing for C/N and δ¹³C‰ values and increasing for δ¹⁵N‰ values. These parameters remain stable between 4 and 10 meters. Based on these results, we have reconstructed the history of lake level changes from sediment cores and also the changes in lake production linked to development of these ecosystems as consequences of lake level changes over the past 20,000 years.

Title: "Recent Investigations into the use of Body Residues as a Dose Metric"

Speaker: Dr. Peter Landrum, Aquatic Toxicologist, GLERL

Abstract:
Traditional aquatic toxicology uses the concentration of contaminants in the external media as the dose in toxicity studies. However, factors that limit the bioavailability of contaminants or the presence of multiple sources for exposure complicate the interpretation of the exposure-response relationship. Because the toxicity of contaminants actually takes place because of contaminant concentrations at a receptor, substituting the body residue as the dose metric should allow clearer interpretation of toxicity with out interferences. This presentation will focus on the factors that influence the use of body residues and the utility of using body residues to for toxicity assessment. Specifically the role of damage repair that drives the temporal nature of the body residue dose response relationship, the impact of biotransformation and implications for the use of body residues as a dose metric and interpretation of mixture toxicity with body residues will be presented.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Title:" A Carbon Budget for Lake Malawi, Africa"

Speaker: Dr. Harvey Bootsma, Assistant Research Scientist, Great Lakes Water Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Abstract:
Although photosynthetic rates have been measured in many tropical lakes, few studies have examined other carbon input and output processes in these systems. We present the results of a multi-year study in which photosynthesis, river inputs, atmospheric deposition, sedimentation, and burial were measured in Lake Malawi. High organic carbon concentrations and high particulate:dissolved organic carbon ratios in rivers reflect a large impact of land-use practices on allochthonous carbon inputs. However, most organic carbon input to the lake is via algal photosynthesis. A comparison of inputs and outputs indicates that photosynthesis and respiration are approximately balanced, with permanent burial representing about 10% of total organic carbon input. Dissolved inorganic carbon profiles suggest that the lake is a carbon sink during the productive period following mixing, and a carbon source to the atmosphere during the stratified season. Although total phytoplankton production is proximately limited by nitrogen, phosphorus and iron, sediment profiles and water column nutrient profiles indicate that new production and carbon burial are controlled by silica supply.

Title:"Great Lakes Coastal Observation Systems and Microsensor Development"

Speaker: Steven Ruberg, Research Engineer, GLERL

Abstract:
Portable wireless observation buoys based on the IEEE 802.11b standard are being developed to provide real-time chemical, biological, and physical measurements. Integrated circuit based micro-sensors are being developed in collaboration with Sensicore, Inc. that are capable measuring pH, conductivity, chloride, ammonium, and dissolved oxygen in a single low-cost package.

Video available on CD by request: Rochelle.Sturtevant@noaa.gov

Title:"A Physical-Biological Coupling for the West Florida Shelf and a New Development of Turbulence-Wave Interaction and Its Applications"

Speaker: Dr. Le Ly, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

Speaker: Cheegwan Lee, Research Associate
Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research (CILER), University of Michigan

Title: "GLERL's Distributed Hydrology Model for the Maumee River Watershed"

Speaker: Dr. Thomas E. Croley II, Research Hydrologist, NOAA/GLERL

Abstract:
GLERL adapted their Large Basin Runoff Model from its lumped-parameter definition for an entire watershed to a two dimensional representation of the flow cells comprising the watershed. GLERL modified the LBRM to allow cell inflow from upstream by considering only flows be-tween adjacent cell surfaces but not their subsurface zones. They also organized watershed cell calculations and implemented spatial flow routing. They now take model parameters for each cell proportional to spatial variations observed in the field (in permeability, surface slope, land use and cover, and flow roughness) and calibrate to find the spatial mean parameter values. GLERL and Western Michigan University developed spatial databases for the Kalamazoo River watershed and the Maumee River watershed, for use with the distributed model. After experi-menting with modeling alternatives and behavior, they applied the model to both watersheds to produce animations of spatial outputs, mapped over the watershed. These include daily air tem-perature, precipitation, snow pack, upper soil zone moisture, lower soil zone moisture, ground-water moisture, evapotranspiration, surface moisture storage, and runoff for every cell compris-ing the watershed. GLERL considered several methods to spatially estimate meteorology and depicted their spatial appearance. The animations help to clarify the hydrological processes un-derway in the continuous simulation of the watershed. Extensions of the distributed-parameter model include the addition of lateral cell flows between adjacent subsurface zones (soil zones and groundwater zone), spatial variation schemes for additional model parameters, land cover/land use experiments, application to other watersheds, and the addition of conservative tracer concentrations.

Wednesday
January 14

Title:"Observations of Steep Wave Statistics in Open Ocean Waters"

Speaker: Dr. Nicholas Scott,
Post Doctoral Scholar, Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution