Project Spotlight

The Project in the Spotlight is a feature of this webpage where we highlight a new or ongoing water quality projects of interest to the GEOAquaWatch Community. If you would like us to feature your project please contact Merrie Beth Neely

Dr. Amalia Handler, Oregon State University, Invited Speaker for World Lake Day-themed Webinar on September 9, 2025.

World Lake Day Q&A with Dr. Amalia Handler, Oregon State University

What opportunities does World Lake Day open for strengthening collaboration on water quality outcomes between Americans in lakeside communities and scientific researchers?

World Lake Day is a great opportunity to bring researchers and lakeside communities together to co-design monitoring plans that reflect local concerns and to use scientific findings to inform local restoration and preservation efforts. This collaboration can empower communities with data about their own lakes to foster a shared sense of stewardship and action.

What are meaningful actions governments or institutions can take on World Lake Day to inspire new forms of lake monitoring and management?

Institutions can inspire new forms of monitoring by funding projects that integrate diverse data sources, from remote sensing to field samples to watershed modeling outputs. This approach can help provide a more holistic picture of lake health and assist communities in making informed management decisions.

As we celebrate the first World Lake Day, what message would you want the world to hear about your research, the lakes you studied, and your hope for those lakes’ future?

Our research on mountain lakes shows that these lakes are generally healthier than non-mountain lakes, but mountain lakes are not immune to ecological challenges. These lakes can be particularly vulnerable to pollution from even small amounts of nearby development. My hope is that this World Lake Day inspires a unified effort to protect our lakes, recognizing that safeguarding waters requires a comprehensive approach that includes everything from the surrounding basin to the lakeshores and the deepest parts of each lake.

Be sure to join us for this exciting presentation or watch the recording later on our YouTube Channel.

Satellite remote sensing to assess cyanobacterial bloom frequency across the United States at multiple spatial scales

Dr. Megan Coffer, U.S. EPA, WWQA Advisory Committee, and GEO AquaWatch Management Team

Satellite imagery was used to assess the temporal frequency of cyanobacterial blooms for over 2,000 inland, freshwater lakes and reservoirs across the contiguous United States. To quantify cyanobacteria presence, the Cyanobacteria Index was retrieved using data from the Copernicus Programme’s Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), which offers near-daily revisit frequency at a spatial resolution of 300 m. Temporal frequency was defined for each satellite pixel as the percentage of satellite images for that pixel throughout the year exhibiting detectable cyanobacteria.

In the figure above, each state is represented as a hexagon labeled with each its two-letter state abbreviation, and each hexagon acts as a pie chart representing the proportion of pixels in the state whose annual temporal frequency indicates a cyanobacterial bloom was present. State-scale temporal frequency was highest for the states of Oregon (OR) and Ohio (OH) at 65% and 52%, respectively. Meanwhile, Georgia (GA) had the lowest state-scale temporal frequency, averaging just over 1%, and 21 states, representing nearly half of states considered, had average state-scale bloom frequencies below 10% in 2019. State-scale temporal frequency results can assist in the prioritization of sampling resources and mitigation efforts. Similar analyses have also been performed to compute the weekly occurrence of cyanobacteria and the spatial extent. Summaries of each of these indicators can be found through the U.S. EPA’s Report on the Environment “Cyanobacteria in Lakes” indicator.

Water-ForCE

After more than 3 years of work, the Water-ForCE project has come to an end in 2024. GEO AquaWatch was delighted to have Water-ForCE Scientific Coordinator Dr. Tiit Kutser, Tartu Ulikool summarize the important outcomes of this project at our 2023 Biennial GEO AquaWatch meeting.

Water-ForCE leaves a comprehensive list of 41 deliverables that are available on their website and Zenodo community, including the most important outcome: the Roadmap for the Future of inland water services for Copernicus. We encourage you to dowload and read the Roadmap for yourselves and to share the Roadmap brochure with colleagues at upcoming science meetings.

Congratulations to the entire Water-ForCE team!

Globe WQ – Global Water Quality and Analysis Platform

Globe WQ is a pilot project to create a Global Water Quality and Analysis Platform. It is the goal of the cooperative project GlobeWQ together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to ensure that measurement data on water quality all over the world are recorded and analyzed more reliably than before by using standardized procedures. To this end, in-situ measurement data is linked with remote-sensing data and computer models. The worldwide information on water quality should be processed on a web-based platform in such a way that it can be used for decisions and measures down to the regional level.

The main goals of GlobeWQ are thus:

to develop, test and – in exemplary ways – apply an integrated and cross-scale analysis and evaluation methodology for water quality of surface and groundwaters;
to provide novel data synthesis of in-situ measured, modelled and remote sensing based information;
to identify existing and developing threats to water security with focus on water quality.

GlobeWQ is embedded in the World Water Quality Alliance led by the UN Environment Programme with the challenging task to compile a World Water Quality Assessment by 2023 on current and future freshwater quality. The GlobeWQ project is a direct continuation of the pre-study that resulted in a snapshot of world’s water quality and a roadmap for a worldwide assessment. The GlobeWQ project is associated to the BMBF funding measure Water as a Global Resource (GRoW).

Find out more about the pilot on the Fact Sheet.