A recent decline in water level on Lake Erie may result in increased applied fluid forces at the lake bed. In places where the previously deposited sediments have been exposed to toxic pollutants, it is important to identify possible regions of resuspension. In this study, areas of possible resuspension were examined for the heavily populated Cleveland, Ohio, region and for the entire lake. Areas of possible resuspension were identified as areas onshore of the offshore closure contour of incipient motion. The closure depth and closure contour of incipient motion was examined for five wave climates.
<</p>p>Observations from NOAA buoy 45005 were used to identify the five wave climates. Numerical predictions by the Great Lakes Forecasting System (GLFS) were used to estimate the wave climate over the entire lake. Shallow water effects were approximated with an empirical model for wave skewness. The wave height and wave period estimates were used to estimate the Shields parameter at each location. Contours were calculated at the critical values of the Shields parameter estimates. The closure contours were evaluated with radiometrically corrected images from Landsat 7 near the Mentor, Ohio, area. Following model evaluation, calculations were performed for both linear and skewed waveforms and two sediment grain sizes over a range of water levels. The closure contours of incipient motion predicted from the GLFS wave simulations are in better qualitative agreement than those predicted by the NOAA buoy data, which tend to overpredict resuspension in higher wave climates. The Shields parameter was found to be more sensitive to wave period than to wave height. The shallow, relatively flat central basin of Lake Erie is more susceptible to decreases in water level and increased wave conditions than the eastern basin.