At the conclusion of this four-year, two-project period, it is our program objective to have a fully integrated, calibrated system which can, on an hourly basis, make accurate forecasts, nowcasts, and hindcasts of the watershed runoff volume, heat, and sediment loads to Lake Erie. Implicit in this goal is the coupling of the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) watershed forecasting system with the Great Lakes Forecasting System. The research objectives of the fisrt two-year project are to apply the existing NOAA/GLERL lumped and seim-distributed watershed models to the Maumee watershed test basin; integrate the watershed model systems with the Great Lakes Forecasting System; and evaluate the coupled systems, particularly in their ability to forecast extreme flow and low flow events.

The rationale for this project derives from the increasing press to manage or choose between a variety of competing activities in any harbor and tributary region that joins a watershed to the Great Lakes. Unlike simple rivers which drain to a lake, the confluence between the watershed and the Great Lakes is an extremely complex physical-, biological-, and chemical-mixing zone. The nine different harbor/tributary information needs documented in the proposal cannot be at all addressed by simple data collection, nor the separate application of the watershed model of GLFS. Only an integrated data/model system can provide the required accurate information in a timely fashion.

The methodology to pursue the four objectives above is predicated upon three attributes. Fisrt is the availability of existing but heretofore separate model/forecasting systems; the GLERL Water Resources Forecasting System (WaRFS) and the Great Lakes Forecasting System (GLFS). Second, the system is also based upon existing operationally collected data and therefore no ad hoc or research specific data need to be collected. Validation data sets will be employed from existing Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Lake Erie Protection Fund, Ohio Sea Grant, and GLERL data sets. Finally, this project integrates with six other existing Western Basin/Maumee River research projects.