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GLERL NEARSHORE and OPEN-LAKE HYDRODYNAMICS RESEARCH PROGRAM
General Background
Most studies of the Great Lakes from the 1950's through the 1980's focused on either whole-lake or open-lake (i.e., off-shore) areas. However, some programs, such as the 1976-1982 Pollution Through Land Use Activities (PLUARG) Program and the 1980's Connecting Channels Study, were oriented towards the nearshore area. These programs found that the nearshore area is a critical link between land and open lake ecosystems. In the aquatic environment, few areas are more profoundly affected by human activities than the coastal areas, especially near large population centers and in bays, harbors, and the Great Lakes, where circulation and flushing are restricted. A better understanding of this environment is needed for reasons that range from improved weather forecasting to prediction of the movement of contaminated sediments. Effective remediation and management of diverse coastal areas depends on an accurate assessment of present conditions and an understanding of the hydrodynamic processes controlling sediment remobilization and transport.
Relatively little is known about the hydrodynamics of nearshore areas. In the Great Lakes, large-scale physical processes such as surface and internal waves and seiches, topographic waves, and wind-driven circulations, drive many of the coastal hydrodynamic phenomena. Thus it is always necessary for local studies with a nearshore focus to extend into the open lake to determine causative physical forcing. In the early 1990's, GLERL started reorienting its research and information gathering activities towards a greater overall focus on the nearshore area. The long term objectives of the Nearshore and Open-Lake Hydrodynamics program are:
- to synthesize the results of research studies on wind and wave dynamics, thermal structure, currents, biological processes, and water chemistry of the nearshore region, and apply them to practical problems of coastal environmental management and planning;
- to study the relationship between the physical processes and forces driving lake circulation and the frequency and characteristics of sediment resuspension in varying water depths and sediment types;
- to conduct research to measure, define, and describe the whole-basin circulation of large lakes; and,
- to guide application of basic and applied scientific research to critical coastal environmental problems requiring unique expertise available in academic and NOAA laboratories.
Last updated: 2004-03-25 mbl