NASA Glenn and Partners studying Lake Erie algal bloom

Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland are using NASA Glenn remote-sensing technology to learn more about the Lake Erie algal bloom that contaminated water supplies in northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan over the weekend. Deploying a hyper-spectral imager and miniature spectrometers aboard Glenns S-3 aircraft, which began the flight campaign August 5, researchers from Glenn and its partners are using the high-resolution instruments to capture images that will reveal western Lake Eries characteristics across the light spectrum. Each aquatic component of the lake has a unique spectrographic signature. By studying these signatures, researchers can improve their ability to remotely identify the biochemical properties of an algal bloom and predict when and where they will form.