Water data to answer urgent water policy questions: Monitoring design, available data and filling data gaps for determining the effectiveness of agricultural management practices for reducing tributary nutrient loads to Lake Erie -- Addendum describing new, expanded, and planned monitoring sites
This Addendum describes new, expanded, and planned water monitoring sites in the Lake Erie drainage basin that were initiated subsequent to the preparation of Betanzo et al. (2015), the primary report with which this Addendum is associated. In addition to the new water monitoring sites, new programs have been initiated that focus on expansion of agricultural management practices to reduce nutrient transport to Lake Erie and facilitate data sharing between researchers involved with agricultural management and water-quality monitoring. This Addendum evaluates the applicability of these new monitoring sites and programs for answering the case-study policy question explored in Betanzo et al. (2015), “How effective are agricultural management practices at reducing nutrients from nonpoint sources at the watershed scale in the Lake Erie drainage basin?” The water monitoring data needs for answering the case-study policy question identified in Table 18 of Betanzo et al. (2015) were used to identify relevant monitoring sites in this Addendum, specifically focusing on total phosphorus (TP), dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP)1 , and streamflow data (the complete list of parameters needed appears in Table 3 of Betanzo et al. (2015)). The new information summarized in this Addendum consists of water monitoring and agricultural management activities conducted by agencies and organizations whose data were compiled in the nutrient data set described in Betanzo et al. (2015), and programs identified in public news releases. Although this information is considered to be comprehensive and complete as of February 2015, there may be other new or planned water monitoring programs, of which we are not aware, that are not included here.