Development of a Lake of the Woods integrated modelling framework to study nutrient loadings and lak

Session: Physical Processes in Lakes (3)

Reza Valipour, Environment and Climate Change Canada, [email protected]

Abstract

Development of a Lake of the Woods integrated modelling framework to study nutrient loadings and lake response

Reza Valipour, Craig McCrimmon, Jun Zhao, Phil Fong, Ram Yerubandi

Lake of the Woods is a binational (Canada-US) multi-basin water body with more than 14,000 islands located in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and the U.S. state of Minnesota. We developed an integrated modelling framework for the U.S. and Canadian watersheds to simulate nutrient loadings to the lake and the Lake’s response. The CanSWAT watershed model is used to provide input loading estimates, and two lake hydrodynamic-water quality models AEM3D (also known as ELCOM-CAEDYM) and Delft 3D are used to simulate lake-wide seasonal hydrodynamics, surface waves, sediment transport, water quality, and algal bloom. We use spatially variable observed winds from bi-national stations, Rainy River and other local lake tributaries inflows, and Kenora and Norman dams’ outflows, and initialize the lake model using observed hydrodynamic and water quality profiles. We examine the accuracies of model results using extensive field observations, and present the preliminary watershed and lake models results.