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GLERL EPISODIC EVENTS RESEARCH PROGRAM
General Background
In August 1997, the NOAA-Coastal Ocean Program and National Science Foundation-Coastal Oceanography Program began a jointly funded program to study the impact of this episodic plume event on sediment and constituent transport and subsequent ecological effects in Lake Michigan. This program, Episodic Events: Great Lakes Experiment (EEGLE), is being coordinated by GLERL and includes three field years and two years of subsequent interpretation and product development.
EEGLE involves participants from seventeen research institutions. Program components include a retrospective analysis of satellite imagery, water intakes, and other data, process and survey cruises, moored current meters, traps and data acquisition instruments and coupled hydrodynamic-sediment transport-ecological modeling. Attempts to compute a mass balance for nutrients and contaminants in the Great Lakes have implied that resuspension of contaminated sediments contributes many times the sum of all external inputs. We are evaluating a recurrent annual winter-spring resuspension event in order to estimate its impact on internal cycling of constituents and subsequent effects on lake ecology. Our goal is to characterize the materials in the plume, infer their sources, and assess their potential impact on the cycling and transport of nutrients and contaminants. Results will improve our understanding of critical processes that affect the ecosystem, and will support the development of a resource management-oriented information and modeling system.
Click here to check out the Episodic Events Great Lakes Experiment Homepage: EEGLE
Last updated: 2004-03-25 mbl