A project update from GLERL Deputy Director, Jesse Feyen

GLERL has a long track record for modeling and predicting circulation and levels for our Great Lakes waters. Now we are working to apply this expertise in Lake Champlain, a large lake system that is shared with Canada. The lake lies along the New York/Vermont border and flows north into Quebec via the Richelieu River. In 2011, this lake-river system experienced significant precipitation and wind events that raised the levels of Lake Champlain to record levels and caused extensive flooding and damage around the lake and along the Richelieu River.

As a cross-border boundary water, management of the Lake Champlain/Richelieu River system is subject to the International Boundary Waters Treaty. In responding to a reference from the governments of the United States and Canada, the binational International Joint Commission (IJC) is conducting a study exploring the causes, impacts, risks, and solutions to flooding in the basin like during 2011.

The IJC has tapped GLERL to play a lead role in the study given our expertise in modeling the hydrology and hydrodynamics of the Great Lakes and experience working with Canadian partners. As a key expert in the IJC’s Upper Great Lakes Study and the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Study, GLERL Director Deborah Lee was invited to serve as a U.S. member of the project’s Study Board, which provides the overall guidance and direction for the project. Deborah nominated Deputy Director Jesse Feyen to head up the U.S. portion of the study’s Hydraulics, Hydrology, and Mapping Technical Working Group, or HHM TWG.

A GLERL-led team of research partners is building solutions to these flooding issues in Lake Champlain and Richelieu River System. In addition to Lee and Feyen, team members include Integrated Physical and Ecological Modeling and Forecasting (IPEMF) Philip Chu, Drew Gronewold, and Eric Anderson; Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) Dima Beletsky, Haoguo Hu, and Andy Xiao, with support from Lacey Mason; and the Northeast River Forecast Center’s Bill Saunders.

The two priorities of the study are to determine what flood mitigation measures can be implemented in the basin, and to create new flood forecast tools for the system. Current flood models operated by the National Weather Service (NWS) cannot account for the effects of winds and waves on Lake Champlain water levels, which can increase water level by several feet, significantly impacting flooding.

The modeling approach used in this study mirrors GLERL’s work in the Great Lakes. In Lake Champlain, a 3D FVCOM is being built to model water levels, temperature, and circulation; a WAVEWATCH III wave model will be coupled to FVCOM model to predict wave conditions; a WRF-Hydro (Weather Research and Forecasting) distributed hydrologic model will predict streamflow and runoff into the basin. This approach relies on models that are in use at NOAA and can readily be transferred to operations by the NWS and National Ocean Service, both of which have been participating in planning throughout the project.

While flooding issues in the Lake Champlain and Richelieu River system pose steep challenges on both sides of the border, GLERL brings the leadership, technical expertise as well as a “One NOAA” approach that are all essential for leveraging progress.