The Effect of Cross-scale Interactions on Freshwater Ecosystem State Across Space and Time

The main goal of this research is to develop tools to measure and understand how climate and land use by themselves and as interacting factors affect lake ecosystems across scales of time and space (cross-scale interactions), even as these factors are themselves, changing. This project will identify and measure the most important cross-scale interactions that control lake nutrients and water quality. Although the study focuses on lake nutrients, the models, tools, and knowledge will be useable to study cross-scale interactions in other important ecosystems. This collaborative team from three universities will collect an unprecedented dataset on lakes, nutrients, and watersheds, including over 17,000 lake ecosystems in 17 U.S. states spanning up to 30 years. Several new and innovative statistical modeling approaches will be used to tackle these important problems. To date, we are using HPCC for high-resolution digital terrain processing across the 17-state area. We anticipate using it for the complex spatial-temporal models that we have planned in coming years.