Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2002TX51B

Higher-Order Statisticts in Transport and Evolution of Algae Blooms

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2002 Start Date: 2002-03-01 End Date: 2003-02-01
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $22,500

Principal Investigators: Jordan Furnans, Ben Hodges

Project Summary: Water quality models are critical in order to develop data for US Environmental Protection Agency-mandated Total Maximum Daily Loads [TMDLs]. Currently-used water quality models use only mean values of steady-state variables [for example, dissolved phosphorus, particulate nitrogen, phytoplankton mass, and stored nutrients] to predict the occurrence of algal blooms. The use of mean values removes important maximum and minimum values as well as the population variance. As a result, these techniques have been criticized as not accurately or adequately modeling the relationships between nutrients, phytoplankton, and algal blooms. As an alternative, this project will develop a sub-grid representation of the statistical distributions for water quality variables, thus resulting in a better resolution of non-linear dynamics that need to be considered when evaluating this issue. Objectives of this project are to develop a consistent methodology to apply high order statistics [multiple modes, variance, and skewness] to represent algal and nutrient concentrations, to evaluate various transport techniques, and to implement these improvements in a 3-dimensional model. The anticipated results of this project will be the development of statistically sophisticated, 3-dimensional, models that can be of great assistance in predicting and evaluating conditions where nutrients and poor water quality are thought to lead to algal blooms and other water quality concerns.