10 Year Research Program To Probe Lake Erie's Falling Oxygen Levels

[hatrack]

Dozens of scientists will take a sweeping look at Lake Erie starting next month in what is being called one of the largest research projects ever on the Great Lakes.

The two-year international project, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will focus on the lake's food chain, which starts at the microscopic level and goes up to predator fish, such as walleye, bass and burbot.

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Researchers will measure phosphorus and other physical and biological characteristics of Lake Erie from May through October to help understand how they affect lower oxygen levels. Phosphorus in fresh water serves as a nutrient. It washes off from yards and farm fields where it is used as a fertilizer and winds up in the lake. Phosphorus also is discharged into the lake from sewage treatment plants.

In the last decade, dissolved phosphorus levels have steadily increased. This alarmed scientists because phosphorus had been steadily dropping through the 1980s, primarily because communities had spent billions of dollars to improve discharges from sewage treatment plants. Research over the past few years shows the leading culprits for the phosphorus change are zebra and quagga mussels, exotic invaders from Ukraine and Asia that have arrived in ship ballast water since 1988. The fingernail-size clams filter microscopic organisms out of the water and expel vast amounts of phosphorus, which is then concentrated along the shoreline and lake bottom. The higher phosphorus levels are causing more algae to grow. Of particular concern is microcystis, a blue-green algae that is inedible and, in the right conditions, can release toxins that can affect fish and other aquatic life, Knight said."

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[phantom power]

1. That's a shame. They finally cleaned up their pollution,

and now they've got to figure out how to clean up the emissions from an invasion of Von Neuman machines.