The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative requires oversight, monitoring, assessment, and coordination to succeed. Recognizing this necessity, the GLRI Action Plan incorporated these critical themes into Focus Area 5. NOAA is contributing to this focus area by providing a coordinated network of scientific observations and models, and youth education programs. Together, these initiatives provide tools and resources to sustain this tremendous investment in the Great Lakes.
Read on to learn more about NOAA’s Focus Area 5 projects:
Education Objective
Great Lakes Bay Education and Training (B-WET) program
B-WET is an environmental education program that provides competitive funding for projects that support place-based experiential learning for students and related professional development for teachers.
Contact: Sarah.A.Waters@noaa.gov
Place-based education at Great Lakes National Marine Sanctuaries
This project supports the Great Lakes National Marine Sanctuaries to build out the youth engagement aspect of the NMS “Get Into Your Sanctuary” initiative, using these sites as places to raise awareness about the value of our protected waters.
Contact: Ellen.Brody@noaa.gov
Sea Grant outreach capacity - Great Lakes Literacy (CGLL)
This project enhances the Center for Great Lakes Literacy’s vision to build a community of Great Lakes literate educators, students, scientists, environmental professionals, and citizen volunteers dedicated to improved Great Lakes stewardship.
Contact: Chelsea.Berg@noaa.gov
Science Objective
Additional winter ecosystems monitoring
In the offshore waters of Lake Erie in the winter season (Jan-March), the focus will be on inventorying nutrients, measuring phytoplankton biomass and the spatial extent of the winter diatom bloom, assessing the role of the winter bloom in the formation of central basin hypoxia, and surveying seed banks of the winter diatoms to predict areas of bloom recruitment. In Lake Michigan sampling will occur 1-2 times during the winter to collect lower food web information on nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and Mysis to provide a more complete understanding of the annual cycles in the lake and of factors that are controlling recruitment of important species within the lake.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Characterizing Great Lakes HABs toxicity and management implications
This study will provide the science and data needed to better understand and predict the toxicity of cHABs in the Great Lakes. This information is needed by decision makers to help inform long-term management strategies for cHAB toxins in addition to, and in concert with, current strategies for biomass reduction.
Contact: Reagan.Errera@noaa.gov
Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative
NOAA scientists are participating in a collaborative effort, funded in part by the GLRI, to improve scientists’ understanding of the structure and function of the ecosystem of Lake Huron (2012) and Lake Michigan (2015). The Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) specifically seeks to clarify the impacts of stressors such as invasive species, climate change, nutrient loading, and overfishing on the Great Lakes.
Contact: Reagan.Errera@noaa.gov
Development of a satellite remote-sensing algorithm to detect and monitor phytoplankton community composition in the Great Lakes
NOAA will build an algorithm to obtain phytoplankton community composition (PCC) information from NOAA VIIRS aquatic color satellite data. The algorithm will be built based on satellite-derived phytoplankton light absorption spectra, aph(λ), and field-measured phytoplankton taxonomy data already collected in the Great Lakes. NOAA will also apply the develop PCC algorithm to VIIRS data to create monthly PCC maps of the Great Lakes.
Contact: Paul.Digiacomo@noaa.gov
Enhancements and support for Green Bay HAB monitoring
This project will coordinate efforts to better understand and forecast cHAB events throughout the Great Lakes and determine if the same forces are driving blooms between systems to inform mitigation strategies for each site.
Contact: Reagan.Errera@noaa.gov
Federal capacity to coordinate and implement LAMP programs
NOAA is active in the implementation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement with staff participating on eight of 10 Annex Subcommittees. Annex 2 – Lakewide Action and Management Plans is particularly challenging requiring staff to lend their geographic and technical expertise across five lake processes and the actions under each.
Contact: Jennifer.Day@noaa.gov
Framework for resilient GLRI investments
The goal of this project is to integrate the expertise of federal agencies to improve the ability to design resilient coastal projects by forecasting the range in high and low water elevations, forecasting wave/surge intensity; and identifying areas susceptible to erosion and accretion.
Contact: Lauren.Fry@noaa.gov
Hardened shoreline ecological indicator GIS
Understanding where hardened shoreline plays a role in identifying opportunities for littoral system restoration is a critical aspect of prioritizing work in an anthropomorphic system. NOAA uses existing aerial imagery and ancillary data to develop a baseline hardened shoreline classification using the best available imagery to date.
Contact: Chiara.Zuccarino-crowe@noaa.gov
Improving the understanding of coastal wetland condition and resiliency through high resolution land cover data
Outcomes of this project will focus on the production of high resolution (1-meter or better) land cover data for the Great Lakes basin areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Contact: Nate.Herold@noaa.gov
Lake Erie central basin: Moored instrumentation, remote sensing, and shipboard sampling to link hypoxia and winter production
Through a partnership with the USCG, NOAA will deploy and retrieve gliders during the winter shoulder seasons with the goal of operations throughout the winter. Buoyancy glider operations will inform more routine central Lake Erie monitoring efforts by providing much higher spatial and temporal observations of water quality, fish and zooplankton.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Lake Huron CSMI nearshore Karst groundwater characterization
NOAA and Grand Valley State University partners will characterize the chemistry and biology of nearshore karst groundwater systems in coastal areas of Lake Huron near Rockport, Mich. This study will provide a more detailed look at the lesser-known deeper groundwater role on the quality and quantity of Lake Huron waters in karst areas.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Late fall, winter and under-ice observations on mobile platforms
The absence of winter information compromises our overall understanding of the Great Lakes ecosystem. In response, this project will integrate and apply available unmanned technologies with remote sensing capabilities for measuring the winter spatial distribution and abundance of one aspect of the Great Lakes food web that represent important food web components (i.e., Mysis and pelagic planktivorous fishes).
Contact: Doran.Mason@noaa.gov
Long-term data assimilative, temperature and currents database
This project is creating a long-term temperature and currents database for lakes Erie and Michigan by assimilating data collected from the SOAR network, moorings and gliders into a Great Lakes forecast model.
Contact: Daniel.Titze@noaa.gov
Observing system deployment to measure year-round export production and phosphorus fluxes related to hypoxia in Lake Erie's central basin
This project will address these gaps in winter observations by deploying an observing system with multiple components, which will provide a unique time series that complements shipboard observations made during April-October, winter sampling aboard U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard vessels, and the hypoxia mooring network operated by NOAA GLERL.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Oxygen Mooring Observation Network (OxyMoorON)
To monitor the spatial and temporal coverage of hypoxia, develop appropriate indictors, and measure the response of hypoxia to changing loads, it is necessary to deploy a monitoring network adequate to quantify the duration, spatial extent, and thickness of the hypoxic layer. The OxyMoorON project will provide temperature and dissolved oxygen data in Lake Erie to assess hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen status and trends.
Contact: Craig.Stow@noaa.gov
Remote sensing products to support GLNPO Great Lakes monitoring
NOAA will derive remote sensing products in support of the three categories in support of GLNPO: 1) products with established methods, 2) pilot research for remotely sensed zooplankton biomass, and 3) longer term goals for future products with methods that are not yet available but are currently in development. A fourth category of technical assistance and guidance to outfit the R/V Lake Guardian with instrumentation upgrades for improved remote sensing-derived products and enhanced water quality monitoring assessments.
Contact: Andrea.Vanderwoude@noaa.gov
Sea Grant outreach and engagement
GLRI provides support to various Sea Grant-led projects that extend the impact of U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office using Sea Grant outreach capacity.
Contact: Chelsea.Berg@noaa.gov
Great Lakes Synthesis, Observations, and Response (SOAR) system
NOAA’s Great Lakes Synthesis, Observations, and Response System (SOAR) coordinates and integrates coastal ecosystem observations that support Great Lakes restoration projects, including AOC restoration. GLRI funds have been integral to developing and honing the system, which uses scientific models and observations from on-water and remote sensing platforms to create database products for assessment and decision support.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Great Lakes Synthesis, Observations, and Response (SOAR) under ice
SOAR Under Ice will attempt to provide the initial background high temporal resolution, real-time physical, chemical, and biological observations to improve our understanding of winter ecosystems and provide model and forecast validations.
Contact: Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
Winter observations using autonomous mobile platforms
This project will integrate and apply available autonomous (un-crewed) technologies with remote sensing capabilities for measuring environmental conditions and the winter spatial distribution and abundance of important food web components (i.e., zooplankton, Mysis and pelagic planktivorous fishes).
Contact: Doran.Mason@noaa.gov and Steve.Ruberg@noaa.gov
See also: Foundations: Completed projects