Hypoxia, Excess Nutrients, and Harmful Algal Blooms
Undesirable algal blooms and hypoxia are growing hazards to water resources and society. Integrated modeling of HABs, hypoxia, and nutrient loading is a significant challenge; the path forward makes use of a new generation of models. An improved near-term forecasting capability would serve a need for operational forecasts of evolving surface water quality over periods of days to months. Integrated models are especially needed to identify, feedbacks, couplings, and non-linear behaviors. Increasing cooperation among agencies and coordination with academic communities will be essential to achieve the necessary concentration of resources to predict sources and variability of nutrient inputs and to develop actionable outcomes that can help stakeholders with the informed decision making across space and time that can effectively reduce hypoxia and HABs impacts.