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GLERL 2006 Milestone Reports
< GLERL 2006 Milestone main page
GOAL 1: Ecosystem
Scientist: Dr. Tom Croley (GLERL)
NOAA Program: Ecosystem Research
OAR Performance Measure: Research to improve our understanding of the factors affecting ecosystems and the success of ecosystem approaches to management.
NOAA Performance Objective: Access, model and forecast ecosystem resources for management decisions.
Ecosystem Research Program Performance Measure: PM4: Number of coastal, marine, and Great Lakes ecosystems adequately characterized for management.
Milestone: Addition of watershed erosion and sediment transport mechanics to GLERL's Distributed Large Basin Runoff Model.
Purpose: Agricultural non-point source contamination of water resources by pesticides, animal wastes, and soil erosion is a major problem in much of the Great Lakes Basin. Soil erosion and sedimentation reduce soil fertility and agricultural productivity, decrease the service life of reservoirs and lakes, and increase flooding and costs for dredging harbors and treating wastewater. Sediment, waste, pesticide, and nutrient loadings to surface and subsurface waters can result in oxygen depletion and eutrophication in receiving lakes, as well as secondary impacts such as harmful algal blooms and beach closings due to viral and bacterial and/or toxin delivery to affected sites. Prediction of these ecological consequences, as well as sediment conservation at the watershed scale, require estimation of soil erosion and transport through a watershed by hydrological processes.
Efforts and Results (to date): We adapted the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, second version (RUSLE2). It offers a rudimentary consideration of erosion for use in a continuous simulation model. It requires four erosion parameters defined over the surface area of a subject watershed, which are available, and an erosivity determined by precipitation. We built mass continuity solutions for sediment transport within small cells of the watershed to consider sediment entering the channel (from erosion) and upstream sediment flow and to calculate transport and deposition. We considered that either 1) all erosion enters the channel, or 2) only erosion within the capacity of surface runoff to the channel enters and the rest remains for later re-erosion. The next steps will be to build RUSLE2 parameter databases for the soils of the watershed and to calibrate against observed watershed sediment flows.
Customer(s): NOAA Center of Excellence in Great Lakes and Human Health associates in the construction of forecasts for harmful algal blooms and beach closings, to NOAA ECOFORE ecological forecasting of Lake Erie hypoxia and impacts, and to the people the technology is transferred to from these efforts.
Cause Factors (if milestone not met): N/A
Revised Completion Date (if milestone not met): N/A
Last updated: 2006-07-17 mbl