By ideastream's Brian Bull
NOAA researchers say June’s heavy rains pumped high levels of phosphorous into Lake Erie, raising concerns toxic algae that can threaten drinking water supplies could return. Scientists at Cleveland’s NASA Glenn Center say they’re ready to resume algae tracking efforts soon with a specialized aircraft and tracking system.
The daily flights helped during Toledo’s algae water crisis last summer. They cover a swath of Lake Erie between Cleveland and the Western shores of the lake.
Inside the large hangar at NASA Glenn, Roger Tokars explains the special tracking and imaging apparatus installed in the bottom of his twin propeller aircraft.
“It uses an optical setup with a camera, initial navigation systems’ behind it," explains Tokars. "And the power system is the orange box in front. There’s also a GPS system above. And we use all these instruments together to map out our reflectance data of the water.”
That information can be quickly analyzed with readings taken by other environmental agencies. Warnings are then issued to municipalities if there are signs of incoming toxic algae blooms.
In recent months, members of Congress from around the region successfully pushed for NASA to fully fund the algae monitoring.
NASA Glenn Director Jim Free says the effort was appreciated.
“They funded our full proposal to get the aircraft ready, to prepare the hyper-spectrometer and then the total number of flight hours. So it was actually everything that we had requested was funded.”
That funding came to $800,000, approved just a couple weeks ago.
Free expects NASA to start algae tracking flights on July 16 th.