In a new paper published in the journal Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management, ERG members Serghei Bocaniov and Philippe Van Cappellen, and Don Scavia from the University of Michigan use their recent re-assessments of Lake Erie’s water and phosphorus budgets to relate the average water column phosphorus concentrations to the external phosphorus loads via the water and phosphorus residence times. They then illustrate how the approach can be used to produce first-order estimates of expected changes in phosphorus concentrations in response to sustained changes in external phosphorus loads along the Lake St. Clair-Lake Erie continuum. While applied here to a specific lake system, the approach is general and can be applied to other aquatic systems once their water and phosphorus budgets are known.
