Faculty, student join EPA research ship to survey impact of low oxygen in Lake Erie

Faculty, student join EPA research ship to survey impact of low oxygen in Lake Erie

A Northwest Missouri State University student and faculty member recently joined students in Michigan and Ohio for a research expedition to better understand contaminants and shoreline erosion at Lake Erie.

"I was grateful to be offered it and for the chance to get real-world experience," said William Trabal, a senior geology major from Tabor, Iowa, who was granted the opportunity to join Assistant Professor of Geology Dr. Onema Adojoh for the research. "It seemed almost too good to be true until I was on the boat."

In August, Trabal and Adojoh joined students from the University of Michigan and The University of Akron to collect new sediment cores from Lake Erie. During the course of nine days, they traveled on a ship equipped and supported by EPA staff. The team collected samples at seven locations, day and night.

Adojoh served as the principal investigator for the survey of an area that cut across the lake from Detroit and through part of Ontario to Rochester, New York.

"Our curiosity is to verify and confirm if the changes in thickness of core sediments across the central lake basin can inform us about where nutrient-sediments and pollutants are accumulating and perhaps to affirm if the lake coastal shoreline is being eroded and may be a source of contaminant," Adojoh said.

Lake Erie, Adojoh notes, was formed approximately 12,500 years ago after the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. Since then, the lake's initial formation has gone through ecological, hydrological and climatic changes, all contributing to its present-day, low-oxygen conditions and disappearance of aquatic food.

While Lake Erie is the fourth largest of the five Great Lakes by surface area, it is the shallowest and smallest by volume. Despite its size, Lake Erie is the most biologically productive of the Great Lakes, making it a prime location for studying low-oxygen and human impact on freshwater ecology and fisheries.

The two-year project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Ohio Sea Grant in collaboration with researchers at multiple universities.

"Our ongoing investigation would provide a succinct scientific understanding to verify why modern sediment accumulating on the lake floor is high and to establish at what periods in the Earth's history shoreline erosion occurred," Adojoh said. "By studying the eroded bottom layers of sediment collected at the bottom of Lake Erie, we are determined to publish contaminant issues about low oxygen and acidification of the lake over the course of thousands of years, and how eroded sediment patterns accumulated to tell the story."

Trabal is excited to take the research team's findings further, including by studying how low-oxygen zones and harmful algal blooms form on Lake Erie. The research allows him the opportunity to work with scientists and top academic researchers.

Trabal also is learning how to collect and process pollen and heavy metals from the Lake Erie sediments to determine when the low-oxygen and acidification of the lake occurred and its consequences on the aquatic ecosystem.

Although he felt nervous going into the experience, Trabal said the travel ended with him wanting to stay on the ship longer and continue collecting sediment cores.

"The trip allowed me to take the concepts I had learned about in the classroom, such as sedimentology and pollen analysis, and put them front and center in a real-world scenario," Trabal said. "Many times we would be going through the sampling process and Dr. Adojoh would point out things that we had learned about in class that I didn't even realize I was looking at."

After graduating from Northwest, Trabal wants to build a career in environmental conservation and help preserve natural ecosystems and landscapes.