| Phosphorus is considered a major contributor of eutrophication in lakes and rivers. To place efforts to manage Great Lakes phosphorus on a sounder basis, a phosphorus mass budget model with water balance is developed to predict concentrations within the system. This model is validated against phosphorus field data.;The Great Lakes are a complicated series of interacting lakes, rivers and embayments. Segments of the Great Lakes cannot be considered as isolated entities as it is a whole system consisting of conjunctive parts. Lakes and bays in this system are divided into distinct segments and a water balance model is also included here to predict the levels of each part.;Nutrient loads are delivered to each segment consisting of input from tributary runoff, direct point loadings, and atmospheric sources (precipitation). Every segment receives inflows and there is an outflow which transports phosphorus to downstream segments. A Great Lakes mass balance model with water balance can predict the concentration of nutrients giving other inputs as loads, runoff, precipitation, evaporation, etc.;After that, analysis of atmospheric loadings trends was conducted in GIS application since atmospheric loadings are important for nutrients and ions which exist in atmosphere in gaseous phase. Linear regression was also conducted to complete the trends analysis. |
