Researchers to Study Why Dead Zone Returned to Lake Erie
A $2.5 million grant will fund a five-year study examining why a dead zone has returned to Lake Erie, and researchers hope the findings will allow them to detect the cause and stop the spread before the fishery and tourism industries suffer.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Lake Erie dead zone was a key driver for enacting the Clean Water Act and stimulating the environmental movement.
Researchers from the University of Michigan, the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research (CILER), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and several other universities will study the possible causes of the dead zone, as well as develop management and policy options and guidance on a course of action to alleviate the problem. CILER is one of 11 NOAA joint institutes and is administered by the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE). The grant, funded by NOAA’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research, provides scientists $506,190 for five years.
A dead zone is an area of oxygen starved water that cannot sustain aquatic habitat. In the Lake Erie case, researchers will examine three main culprits and the relationships among them: excess phosphorous, zebra mussels, and global warming.
Of the three causes, nitrogen from farm runoff and treatment plants is the best known. The nitrogen in fertilizer causes algae blooms that sink to the bottom of the lake where they are consumed by bacteria, which in turn consumes oxygen.
The second theory is that zebra mussels may shunt the oxygen-consuming organic matter from the near shore to the bottom waters. In the third scenario, global warming has caused the layer of bottom water to become thinner, with less oxygen.
The dead zone materialized in Lake Erie’s central basin and can cover as much as three-quarters of the area. It was discovered through routine monitoring of the lake.
The Great Lakes contain 18 percent of the world’s surface fresh water and 90 percent of the surface fresh water in the U.S. They serve as the focus for a multibillion dollar tourist and recreation industry, supply 40 million people with drinking water, provide habitat for wildlife and fish, and support transportation and agriculture production. Lake Erie is the smallest of the five Great Lakes.
