Large nutrient pools in the bottom sediments of lakes and reservoirs can for many years prevent an ecosystem from returning to a clear water state, even after the external nutrient loads have been greatly reduced. Restoring aquatic ecosystems by sediment dredging, thereby removing legacy organic matter and nutrient waste that have been building up in the bottom sediments for many years of excessive pollutant load, is probably one of the best ways of restoring a lasting healthy and clear water ecosystem. However, sediment dredging is typically also one of the most labor-intensive and expensive restoration approaches. The ambitious Lake Stewardship and RePair projects funded by Grundfos Foundation | PDJF seek to change this – using Lake Ormstrup in Denmark as a full-scale experiment.
Here, a new high precision and gentle approach for removing nutrient-rich sediments is being developed, while at the same time reusing valuable parts of the sediments. We are proud to contribute to this effort by developing a digital twin of Lake Ormstrup. We are using the digital twin of the lake to follow the ecosystem in real time through the WaterWebTools Portal, and also for running long-term virtual experiments that seek to analyze the potential lasting effects of sediment dredging and fish removal. The sediment dredging is ongoing right now in Lake Ormstrup, and is expected to go on for the next month or so. Some of our initial virtual experiments of the sediment dredging suggest that the effects can be long-lasting – in this case testing the effects of removing 95% of the mobile phosphorus pool from the bottom sediments.
News about the sediment dredging approach and the digital twin also features in the Grundfos annual report, which has just been released, and can be found right here:
https://lnkd.in/dwi9UhQU
Thanks to Tobias Kuhlmann Andersen and Anders Nielsen for developing an awesome new postprocessing routine (used to generate the plot - and now available through the free QWET plugin), which makes it a lot easier to deep dive into the mechanisms and nutrient fluxes at play, and how these may change, when a lake is being restored. Also many thanks to Anne Bisgaard Christensen for leading the production of the impressive Grundfos annual report, and to all Lake Stewardship and RePair project partners for contributing to such a meaningful project.
Soil Improvement Director at BAUER Spezialtiefbau GmbH
3moMany thanks to Bauer Foundation Corp. Nicole García Sánchez and Zobeida Perez especially. Don't forget to contact our local team in Tampa for USA and worldwide projects Amr Ragy Russell Cooper Matthew Perrino and Mike Smith or Dominique Jullienne for your specialist soil improvement needs in the Americas.