Hosted by US EPA
1. Forecasting Freshwater Cyanobacterial HABs for Sentinel-3 Satellite Resolved U.S. Lakes and Reservoirs
Blake Schaeffer, Ph.D., EPA Office of Research and Development
Because cyanoHABs are a concern for health throughout the United States, there is a need for a large-scale prediction model. To address this need, we used a Bayesian model to estimate the probability of a cyanobacterial bloom occurring in a given week. Specifically, we used an Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) model because it provided a complex and computationally efficient forecasting model that can work with missing data and irregular lake sampling. The INLA model used cyanobacteria presence data derived from Sentinel-3 Ocean Land Color Instrument along with environmental predictor variables from 2016 to 2022 in satellite resolvable lakes across CONUS. This model was applied to forecast World Health Organization recreation Alert Level 1 exceedance >12 μg L−1 chlorophyll-a with cyanobacteria dominance for 2192 satellite resolved lakes in the United States. The prediction results were compared to independent previous cyanobacteria presence satellite imagery to provide performance statistics.
2. OW's Vision for Operationalizing Nationwide HABs Forecast
Michael Paul, Ph.D., EPA Office of Water
The CyAN near-real-time cyanobacterial biomass tool is a foundation of the EPA National HAB Program and is used by state, tribal, and other partners across the U.S. as a key part of their HAB monitoring programs. The expansion of this tool to provide forecasting information could be transformative for many of these partners as it may enable their monitoring teams to better anticipate blooms to provide more accurate advice to the public. This talk will discuss our plans on how the forecasting information will be operationalized and served through existing HAB data platforms.