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New International Watershed Initiative Projects Studying Water Quality, Usage and Pollutants

kevin bunch
Kevin Bunch
Water Matters - St. Mary's River rapids

Recent studies performed under the IJC’s International Watersheds Initiative (IWI) should provide policymakers and researchers with more information to help make decisions related to fishing, water quality and water withdrawal.

A number of projects around the Great Lakes and the St. Mary and Milk Rivers are in the works, focusing on topics from river conditions and algal bloom-causing pollutants to computer model creation.

At the St. Marys River along the Ontario-Michigan border, researchers want to develop a model of the Lake Superior outlet to help managers set water level regulations. The river is teeming with aquatic life, with rapids, wetlands, lakes and islands all providing varied habitat and spawning grounds for fish like northern pike, perch, salmon, whitefish and sturgeon.

 The St. Marys River rapids are popular spawning grounds for a variety of fish. Credit: US Army Corps of Engineers
The St. Marys River rapids are popular spawning grounds for a variety of fish. Credit: US Army Corps of Engineers

According to an initial project proposal, it’s important for managers to be aware what impact water levels and flow rates could have on the river, particularly with the gate system in place to help regulate those aspects. The model could help both with short- and long-term water regulations and gate operations to make sure the waterway remains productive for fishing and other human uses, particularly in the rapids system where fish spawn. The program is will run from January 2017 to June 2017, at a cost of CDN$62,700 Canadian (US$48,094).

Another study on the St. Mary River and Milk River basin in Alberta and Montana is helping to update information on the consumptive use of water in both watersheds, at a cost of US$19,500 (CDN$25,422). Water consumption in the rivers has been studied going back to the 1980s, but the specific consumption and evaporation values used to portion out water supplies for irrigation have been disputed by water users, government officials and IJC commissioners. The project aims to validate and report newer values, and should be ready by October 2016.

Researchers also want to develop a dataset going back 30 years for wetlands around Lake Ontario to help in the fight against invasive phragmites, a notoriously virulent plant that out-competes many native wetland grasses and ruins wildlife habitat.

The proposal is for researchers to look at precipitation rates, evaporation and runoff. While this could be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming using standard computational methods, the Great Lakes Adaptive Management Committee hopes that by breaking it down into five-year segments of basin water data (precipitation, runoff and evaporation) and running them simultaneously, the project can be completed more quickly and at a lower cost, estimated at CDN$55,000 (US$42,188)

This project could not only help determine the link between phragmites’ range and water level regulation, but also be used to help forecasts of future water levels and manage water supplies more efficiently. The project’s results should be ready for publication by March 2017.

Finally, multiple IJC boards are involved in a water quality modeling project using the “SPAtially-Referenced Regressions on Watershed,” or SPARROW system, which measures nutrient loading into water systems. While SPARROW has been used binationally in the Souris River basin, this is the first time it would be used to model nitrogen and phosphorus getting into the Great Lakes basin (along with the Rainy-Lake of the Woods basin) on a binational scale.

IJC Senior Water Quality and Ecosystem Adviser Dr. Glenn Benoy said excessive phosphorus and nitrogen loading into the watershed from runoff are a major factor feeding the harmful and toxic algal blooms that recur in the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Erie. The model could help track down where the worst loading is taking place on both sides of the border to help develop mitigation strategies which could reduce the blooms.

SPARROW is a US Geological Survey (USGS) product, but data from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Environment and Climate Change Canada is being used to help develop the model, Benoy added. It’s expected to cost about CDN$248,407 (US$190,405), with funding from IWI, the NRC and USGS.

The final report on the SPARROW modeling should be complete by March 2017.

A harmful algal bloom covering western Lake Erie on Aug. 10, 2015. Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A harmful algal bloom covering western Lake Erie on Aug. 10, 2015. Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
kevin bunch
Kevin Bunch

Kevin Bunch is a writer-communications specialist at the IJC’s US Section office in Washington, D.C.

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