Ecosystem Reponse to River Inputs in the Great Lakes
American pelicans thriving in the Great Lakes
Funding: NASA The Science of PACE
Earth’s biogeochemical processes are linked across aquatic, terrestrial, atmospheric, and human systems. The terrestrial-aquatic linkage is widely influenced and pushed beyond its natural variability due to intensifying storm events and changing weather patterns, coupled with the legacy of human watershed disturbances. How changes in the timing, amount, and type of riverine material that flows into coastal systems influences carbon cycling and phytoplankton dynamics such as seasonal succession and bloom timing, extent and intensity is limited, which hinders our ability to predict how these ecosystems will respond. We seek to inform how spatiotemporal variability in river inputs, including nutrients and energy, alters the ecological and water quality response of coastal systems in two contrasting systems, oligotrophic Lake Superior and eutrophic Lake Erie.
We are using the hyperspectral ocean color imagery offered by NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) sensor to explore two science questions:
1. How do riverine inputs influence coastal biogeochemical state and phytoplankton dynamics across two distinct coastal systems (Lakes Superior and Erie)?
2. How are carbon dynamics and phytoplankton variability similar and distinct across coastal water parcels with and without significant riverine influence?
