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Enhance Great Lakes beach recreational water quality decision making

Dates

Project Start Date
2010
Project End Date
2014

Summary

Description of Work In collaboration with 23 local and state agencies, beach-specific models were developed at 43 beaches throughout the Great Lakes region, and data were collected at 6 more beaches for future predictive model development. A predictive modeling workshop was hosted by USGS with instructors from USGS, USEPA, and Wisconsin DNR and included training on the use of USGS-developed data aggregation tools and USEPA’s Virtual Beach. Relevance & Impact Over 56 beaches across the Great Lakes region, in addition to those currently being monitored, will be included in this effort to help meet goals for healthier beaches. Key Findings Analyses were completed for a suite of pathogens at 12 Great Lakes beaches. Although fecal-indicator [...]

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Contacts

Principal Investigator :
James R Morris
Associate Project Chief :
James R Morris
Cooperator/Partner :
Amie M G Brady
Lead Organization :
Ohio Water Science Center

Attached Files

Purpose

Water recreation and associated tourism add billions of dollars to the economy of the Great Lakes Region and provide numerous societal benefits. There are several problems, however, with the current approach to establishing beach closures and advisories. First, current beach monitoring practices rely on methods for culturing fecal-indicator bacteria that take 18-24 hours for results, too long to provide information on current water-quality conditions. Secondly, sources of fecal contamination in recreational waters are often unknown and/or of nonpoint origins. The relations between coastal processes (sediment transport and storage, ground-water/surface-water interactions, wave actions, seiches, etc.) and bacteria concentrations have not been comprehensively studied in the Great Lakes. Development of methods that discriminate between human and animal nonpoint-source fecal contamination are needed to help identify risks associated with contaminated recreational waters. Finally, recreational waters are seldom monitored for pathogens, which often have different transport and survival properties than the fecal-indicator bacteria used to indicate their presence.

Project Extension

projectStatusIn Progress

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