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44MTRNovember/December 2011Cleveland Water Department treatment plants took in Lake Erie water with low oxygen concentrations. This caused a cascade of problems in treating the water and resulted in discolored water and numerous customer com- plaints. The utility provides drinking water to 1.5 million people in northeast Ohio. Now, real-time observations from a NOAA Coastal Observation Network buoy in Lake Erie are already going hourly to the Cleveland Water Department. The information should allow extra time to switch to alternate water processing methods if necessary due to sudden changes in lake water quality. Ruberg also points to benefits expected for fisheries managers from a NOAA buoy to be deployed in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Lake Huron. The buoy will provide data on waves, currents, tempera- tures, and weather conditions. It will also feed underwater images to the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary visitor center in Alpena, Mich., as well as to all the other National Marine Sanctuary visitor centers around the country. Scientists from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Thunder Bay sanctuary, and GLERL hope to better understand how changes in water temperature affect the lifecycle and reproduction of lake trout and other species. They are planning to use real-time temperature data in deciding when to sample fish from Thunder Bay. The sci- entists will then be able to correlate trends during the fish- es? first year of life with data sets on spawning in order to better understand the local ecosystem, Ruberg explains. This could in turn enable fisheries managers to more accurately predict fish population trends. GLERL expects to implement the first phase of theimproved GLOS data streaming system by 2012. The Great Lakes Observing System is part of the NOAA-led Integrated Ocean Observing System. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco inspects a Real-time Coastal Observation Network (ReCON) buoy during a visit to the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. NOAA Deputy Undersecretary for Operations Mary Glackin is on the left. The buoy provides real-time observations of physi- cal, chemical, and biological variables in coastal areas. This buoy will be deployed in Lake Huron near Alpena, Mich. Great Lakes freighter. (Photo Credit: NOAA) MTR#9 (34-49):MTR Layouts 11/29/2011 9:45 AM Page 44
