Lake St. Clair is part of the Great Lakes system,
located between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.
It supports recreational, industrial and agricultural activities
for the surrounding population along with providing drinking water to over
4 million people. Lake St.
Clair is of great economic and cultural importance to all of those around
it.
Despite the great importance of the lake, human
influence has caused many changes in the lake, some of which have
negatively impacted the appeal and value of this important resource.
Primary concerns include drinking water quality, swimming area
safety, fish and other wildlife consumption and weed control.
Severe water quality deterioration has caused
bacteria levels at public beaches to sometimes exceed the ‘health
risk’ level. This project
will address this issue with the aim to identify sources of pollution and
to prevent future problems. The project will improve and verify an
existing Great Lakes circulation model for Lake St. Clair that will be
used to predict the path followed by water particles.
The outcome of the research will be used to educate the public and
local administrators on water quality issues in an effort to reduce future
contamination.
The first part of developing an environmental
monitoring network (EMN) is collecting environmental data from Lake St.
Clair. The University of
Michigan has deployed an automated meteorological buoy four miles east of
St. Clair Shores. It will be
used to collect various meteorological data including wind conditions and
temperature. Additional data concerning public beach water quality will be
collected from county health departments’ existing E. coli testing
records.
The second part of the project is using the wind and
water quality data to test and improve the accuracy of the circulation
model. This model is capable of determining the trajectories of particles
at given locations using the input wind conditions.
The final part of the EMN is to communicate the results of the research. One method is to introduce an outreach-based web site that will display now-casts and forecasts of water quality conditions at public beaches.
This satellite image of Lake St. Clair was taken by Landsat Thematic Mapper.
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