UVM Study Suggests Climate Change Could Outpace EPA's Lake Protection Guidelines
A new UVM study suggests that climate change may pose greater challenges for lake clean-up. Photo by Lori Fisher.
New research suggests that Lake Champlain may be more susceptible to damage from climate change than was previously understood-and that, therefore, the rules created by the EPA to protect the lake may be inadequate to prevent algae blooms and water quality problems as the region gets hotter and wetter.
"This paper provides very clear evidence that the lake could be far more sensitive to climate change than is captured by the current approach of the EPA," said University of Vermont professor Asim Zia, the lead author of the new study. "We may need more interventions-and this may have national significance for how the agency creates regulations."
The study, led by a team of ten scientists from UVM and one from Dartmouth College, used a powerful set of computer models that link the behavior of social and ecological systems. Their results show that accelerating climate change could easily outpace the EPA's land-use management policies aimed at reducing the inflow of pollution from agricultural runoff, parking lots, deforestation, cow manure, lawn fertilizer, pet waste, streambank erosion-and other sources of excess phosphorus that cause toxic algae and lake health problems.
The EPA's modeling to prepare its rules under what's called the TMDL, for "total maximum daily load," concluded that "any increases in the phosphorus loads to the lake due to the climate change are likely to be modest (i.e. 15%)," the agency writes. But the eleven scientists, within the Vermont EPSCoR program at UVM, who led the new modeling were concerned that this approach might underestimate the range of likely outcomes in a warmer future.
UVM professor Chris Koliba, a co-author and social scientist on the new study observed that, "there have been extensive efforts by federal regulators, the State of Vermont, and many other stakeholders to try to remediate and improve water quality in our watersheds. These should be honored. The message of our research is not to demean that work, but to say that in the long run protecting the lake is going to take a lot more than what's being proposed right now."Click here to read the full article.
