From data to knowledge: Designing user-driven nutrient loading observatories across the Great Lakes Basin

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The health of the Great Lakes has been an ongoing concern for decades. The Great Lakes are vital to the well-being of Canadians as they contain almost 20% of the world's surface freshwater, creating billions of dollars in economic activity, and providing drinking water for 1 in 4 Canadians. One of the greatest threats to water quality in the lower Great Lakes is the increasing frequency and severity of algal blooms. These occur in response to excess nutrients, such as phosphorus, that enter our waterways from agricultural and urban land uses. Binational targets have been developed to address water quality challenges, such as those driven by the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA), which resulted in a commitment by Canada and the U.S. to reduce phosphorus loads to Lake Erie by 40%. For Canada to meet such goals, it is crucial to know the hotspots where nutrients are entering waterways. This is challenging, given water quality monitoring is limited and there are large gaps in data, resulting in a lack of the knowledge needed to make informed decisions. Our project will address this gap by developing a web-based tool WATERSCAPES that will use current sparse concentration and daily discharge data, and use sophisticated statistical and machine learning models to predict daily concentrations and loads across the Great Lakes basin. Water quality datasets will be provided by our partners (Federal government, Provincial government, Credit valley Conservation Authority, DataStream), and the research team will use this along with a suite of predictor variables such as temperature, slope, precipitation and land use for model development. The portal will be free and accessible to all and provide conservation authorities and regulatory agencies the critical information they need to prioritise additional monitoring, as well as design targeted and cost-effective measures for reducing pollution in watersheds. The new knowledge generated using this tool will not only help inform how Canada can meet its water quality targets, but will also contribute to the actions required to engage and empower communities, provide access to safe, high-quality drinking water, support healthy habitats, and allow for recreational use of the lakes.