Safeguarding Lake Ohrid Against The Impact of

Climate Change And Land Use Changes

SUMMARY PROPOSAL
Centre for Water Research
University of Western Australia (Australia)
And
Hydrobiological Institute Ohrid (Macedonia)
Introduction
Lake Ohrid, in the border region between Macedonia and Albania, is the oldest lake in
Europe and is one of the oldest in the world. Formed tectonically about 5 million
years ago, Lake Ohrid came into existence in the tertiary period, prior to the
glaciation. A UNESCO protected site since 1980, Lake Ohrid is recognised as not
only a place of natural beauty, but of great global historic, cultural, economic and
scientific significance.
Lake Ohrid is home to a large number of endemic species and a unique aquatic
ecosystem that has worldwide importance. Most of the fish species found in the lake
are native to its waters. It is a premier tourist destination in Macedonia, attracting
over 35% of international tourists into the country.

Lake Ohrid (left) and Lake Prespa (right)

Historically, Lake Ohrid and its surroundings have been inhabited for thousands of
years. It has been a centre of various Macedonian kingdoms, it is the birthplace of the
Cyrillic alphabet and it was the site of the worlds first university. The area is home
to hundreds of ancient relics, churches, a fortress, amphitheatres, and is a beacon of
culture, religion and history for Macedonia and the world.

The two endemic Lake Ohrid trout species

The endemic Lake Ohrid sponge

The Problem
Lake Ohrid, like many lakes around the world, is beginning to show signs of
deterioration. The health of the lake has been affected by growth in population,
increased tourism and development, intense fishing pressures, natural habitat
destruction, increased nutrients flow from Lake Prespa and warming of the surface
waters.

Inflow from the spring lake at St. Naum (South part of the lake)
The water of Lake Ohrid undergoes an important natural and regular annual and
decadal mixing process; the annual overturn extends to between 80 and 150 m and the
decadal mixes the whole lake from top to bottom. However, the increase of nutrients
in the lake causes, through a complex biological and chemical set of reactions, an
increase in the bottom salinity, stabilising the water in the lake and making the deeper
waters more stagnant and deprived of oxygen. Slight warming of the surface layer
aggravates this situation.

Outflow at Struga
If Lake Ohrid continues to be exposed to increased nutrients and warming processes,
the deep water layers will become so dangerously stagnant that they may destroy all
plant and animal life when a mixing process eventually brings the deep stagnant low
oxygen water to the top.
Our Solution
The idea of our solution is quite simple. We propose to assist the lakes natural
mixing process to prevent the deep water of the lake from becoming stagnant and
deprived of oxygen. The proposal is to install an automatically-controlled impeller
system that will ensure the mixing continues to take place at a frequency that will
prevent deep water layers from being deprived of oxygen. The impeller system will
not harm the lake or the living organisms in the lake and would mix the water
automatically when the deep water oxygen levels are in danger of falling below
critical values.
The solution we have provided will occur in stages and require the efforts of the
Centre for Water Research as well as the organisations in Macedonia. There are six
tasks necessary over 3 years to bring this idea to a reality:

(1) Year One

1. Real-time Lake Monitoring: Install a real-time Lake Diagnostic System (LDS)1
in a deep part of Lake Ohrid equipped with 50 thermistors over the depth, two
conductivity sensors (one at the surface and one at depth) and a full
meteorological station 2 m above the water surface. Install stream loggers at the
major inflow and outflow
2. Set Up 3D Models Under ARMS: Use the data from tasks 1 above, to set up a
real-time 3D model of the hydrodynamics and the biology (ELCOM-CAEDYM)2
(focus on the inorganic chemistry in order to predict water column stability)
running under the real-time scheduler ARMS3:
3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations
to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on
the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep
layer.

The Lake Diagnostic System is a tool for long-term reservoir water quality monitoring and
management, measuring water column temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and
chlorophyll-a stratification and meteorology above the water surface. The data is transmitted to the
shore station, where it is displayed on the web in pseudo real-time. Visit OLARIS on the main menu to
see the real-time data from LDS installed around the world. The LDS is particularly well known for its
fast response and high resolution thermistor chain, allowing complete measurement of the water
column stratification in <5s.
2

ELCOM (Estuary and Lake Computer Model) is a three-dimensional hydrodynamics model used for
predicting the velocity, temperature and salinity distribution in natural water bodies subjected to
external environmental forcing such as wind stress, surface heating or cooling. ELCOM can be run
either in isolation for hydrodynamic studies, or coupled with the Computational Aquatic Ecosystem
Dynamics Model (CAEDYM) ian aquatic ecological model. CAEDYM consists of a series of
mathematical equations representing the major biogeochemical processes influencing water quality.
Aquatic Realtime Management System (ARMS) is an automated software package that manages
historical and real-time water resource data, has a user friendly visualisation interface, posts
information on the internet, provides real-time and forecast numerical modelling capabilities,
sends messages via email on the status of water resources, and computes decision support
indices to aid in operational management. ARMS will be configured to run ELCOM-CAEDYM.
3

(2) Year 2
1. Carry Out Process Field Experiment: Once the models are running in real-time
it is necessary to carry out a detailed field investigation to validate the major
processes maintaining the long periods of deep water stability and deep water
overturn. This involves probing the lake with the new Multi-Scale-Profiler (MSP)
a vehicle that can document both the turbulent and fine-scale hydrodynamic
properties of the lake and most of the major water quality parameters. This will be
two 5 day experiments, one at the period of maximum stability (around Aug/Sept)
and one at the time of lake overturn (March)
2. LDS and ARMS maintenance
3. Design Impeller System: It is envisage to design a 10 impeller system that
would be running under automatic control via ARMS using the outcome from the
models and the LDS. The design would explore whether it is best to keep eroding
the water column stability throughout the year as a whole or only during the
month of overturn. Prototype testing of suitable impellers in Lake Como (Morillo
et al. 2009) showed that a 4KW Flygt impeller can set up a submerged jet with an
entrained flow at 50 m of around 40 m3s-1. Given that the volume of the very deep
hypolimnion is around 20% of the total lake volume (~10 x 109 m3) 10 impellers
would require about 9 months of mixing time spread over say 9 years or one
winter month per year.
3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations
to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on
the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep
layer.

(3) Year Three

1. Impeller Installation: Such installations have already been tested in Lake Como by
the proponents and are based on a modified version of a standard ITT Flygt mixer.
The cost is indicative as the exact number of impellers would be determined in Task
5. The running costs are minimal as each impeller is only 4 KW. When fully
functional the model predictions will provide the control on the impeller thrust to
slightly augment the natural deep mixing to ensure that a total overturn will take place
at a frequency of between 5 and 10 years as is the case now. This will ensure that the
deep water never posed a threat to the biota residing in the mid and surface waters.
2. LDS and ARMS maintenance
3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations to
gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on the
primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep layer.
(4) Ongoing Annual After Year 3
(i) Lake Diagnostic System
(ii) 3D Models
(iii) Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected
stations to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would
be on the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very
deep layer.
(iv) Impellers

Benefits
The improvement of the Lake Ohrid and prevention of further deterioration will have
direct scientific, social and economic benefits to Macedonia, Albania and Australia .
The health of the lake will be improved, promoting the survival endemic species that
are environmentally and culturally important. Lake Ohrid is critical to Macedonias
tourism industry and brings economic and cultural wealth. We believe that protecting
its natural integrity is vital to the long-term existence of the lake and surrounding
cities and villages.
The study we have proposed will be a landmark for such an old lake system. It is
expected that Lake Ohrid will be a centre for future research of lake processes and our
findings will be applicable to other ancient and important lakes in the world.

There the sunrise warms the soul,

The sun gets bright in mountain woods:
Yonder gifts in great profusion
Richly spread by nature's power.
See the clear lake stretching whiteOr bluely darkened by the wind,
Look you at the plains or mountains:
Beauty is everywhere divine...

from Longing for the South by K. Miladinov (b. 1830, Struga)

DETAILED TECHNICAL PROPOSAL

Safeguarding Lake Ohrid Against The Impact of A Warming Surface Layer And
Increased Nutrient Loading

Centre for Water Research

University of Western Australia (Australia)
And
Hydrobiological Institute Ohrid (Macedonia)
Objective: To protect the endemic biota by augmenting, with the use of deep
impellers, the winter overturn so that deep overturns would be maintained at the
historical interval of between 7 and 10 years, even with slight increases in nutrient
loading and water column stability increases due to climate warming.

Background: Lake Ohrid (Fig. 1) was most likely formed tectonically as a geological
graben (Wagner et al. 2009) sometime in the Tertiary period, about 5 million years
ago (Wagner et al. 2008) as part of a much larger lake system. Separation into a
distinct isolated lake came later about 2 to 3 million years ago (Wagner et al. 2010,
Stankovic 1960). Coring carried out by Wagner et al. (2010) showed a clear increase
in productivity at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition with Total Inorganic Carbon
(TIC), Total Organic Carbon (TOC) increasing from almost zero % of the core
material to a relatively constant value between 2 and 7% (Wagner et al. 2009). This
state remains for around 50,000 years, during which time the high species endemism
formed its final configuration.

Macedonia

Albania
Greece

Fig 1. Landscape view of Lake Ohrid (left) and Lake Prespa (right). Source: Google
Earth. Yellow line marks the boundary among Macedonia, Albania and Greece.

Lake Ohrid has a surface area of around 348 km2, a mean depth of 145 m, a maximum
depth of 298 m (Outcalt and Allen 1982) and a volume of about 54.9 km3 (Matzinger
2006). The bathymetry is shown in Fig 2.

Fig 2. Bathymetric map of Lake Ohrid with 10 m contour intervals. Black lines denote
50 m intervals (Vogel et al. 2010).

The lake receives little inflow from rivers, about 75% of the inflow derives from Lake
Prespa through underground karst conduits that either enter via surface inflows that
plunge to depth or through submerged outflows; either enter the lake at around 20 m
(Matzinger et al. 2006) and about 25% of the water comes from direct rainfall. The
lake loses about 35% of its water through direct evaporation and the remaining 65%
exits via a controlled outflow near the town of Struga (Artinyan 2004); the annual
lake volume fluctuations account for only about 10% of the water budget and the
average residence time is around 75 years.
The depth of the lake leads to a separation of the lake into 4 relatively distinct layers
characteristic of all deep sub-alpine lakes (Salmaso 2005). This vertical structure has
been documented in Lake Ohrid for the period from 1972 to 1978 by Outcalt and
Allen (1982) and by Matzinger et al. (2006) for the period from 2000 to 2005. Lake
Ohrid has a diurnal surface layer down to about 3 to 5m communicated with
atmospheric forcing diurnally, between 5 m and 15 to 20 m resides the seasonal
metalimnion and the layer between 20m and a variable 100 to 200 m is the water that
communicates with the surface layer once a year at the end of winter turn over (Fig.
6). The water below this annual turnover is only mixed into the lake as a whole
around every 7 to 10 years. This latter layer is stabilised by the weak salinity gradients
found at this depth. The deep mixing event that took place in March of 2004 is
described by Matzinger et al. (2006).
Two important major characteristics follow from the above description. First, the age
of the lake (Stankovic 1960, Wagner et al. 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010) and the relatively
long resident time of about 75 years explains the high endemism of the lakes biology;
the biota evolved in the lake for around 3 million years, with little annual disturbance.
Second, the presence of a large deep volume of water, below the annual hypolimnion,
immune to annual turn over events, means that when overturn does occur this deep
water is mixed into the lake as a whole, potentially contaminating the whole lake with
water quality attributes of this deep water, such as low oxygen and higher nutrient
concentrations (Salmaso et al. 2003). The health of the lake as a whole thus depends
critically on the deep hypolimnetic waters do not become too large in volume and that
the dissolved oxygen of this deep water does to fall below a critical value. This
critical value will be different for each lake, the criterion being that when total
overturn occurs and the deep water is mixed with the surface water, that the oxygen in
the surface waters does not fall so low as to cause the death of the endemic biota that
reside there.
The delicate nature of the balance that regulates the deep hypolimnetic waters is
clearly seen if one observes that this deep water often remains at depth for between 7
and 10 years (Matzinger et al. 2006), sheltered from surface wind and cooling
disturbances by a very weak, but effective pycnocline with a density jump as small as
0.005 kg m-3. During these stagnant years, exchange with the water above takes place
only via boundary mixing (Marti and Imberger 2006) or by entrainment from the top
(Imberger 1987); plunging inflows do not penetrate to depth (Matzinger et al. 2006).
As a result of this vertical density structure, Matzinger et al. (2007) identified the
following two threats to the endemic biota of Lake Ohrid:
i. Increasing nutrients due to increase in nutrients in the water coming from Lake
Prespa would increase primary production in the surface layer, increase the

partial pressure of CO2 in the hypolimnion and deep hypolimnion and so

increase the dissolution of CaCO3 and thus further stabilize the water column,
leading to a positive feedback mechanism, driving the deep oxygen
concentrations to zero.
ii. Global warming would slightly increase the surface and metalimnetic water
temperature, thus forming a slightly more robust stratification, isolating the
deep water from the winter convective over turn.
Both these influences would lead to longer intervals between deep water over turn
with the result that a greater mass of low oxygen water would be mixed into the
surface water when overturns eventually do happen with potentially disastrous effects
on the endemic biota.
Project Overview: In the last 10 years many people have contributed to the knowledge
of the health of Lake Ohrid and have warned of the dangers of rising surface water
temperatures combined with gradually rising nutrient levels in the inflow from Lake
Prespa due to land use changes; these changes are occurring on a time scale of 20 to
40 years (Spirkovski et al. 2001). Clearly, the long term solution for the preservation
of the internal species icon lies in reversing the warming and ameliorating the
increasing nutrient loading. However, this is an impossible task on the timescale of
documented deterioration and so we are proposing an intermediate term solution that
will safeguard the invaluable endemic biota for the next 50 years, allowing long term
restoration of the catchment to be implemented.
The proposal is to install an automatically controlled impeller mixing system that will
augment the natural very deep decadal overturn and ensure that the overturn continues
to take place at a frequency that will prevent a large mass of low oxygen water to
accumulate in the deep bottom water; mixing would automatically take place when
the deep water oxygen levels are in danger of falling below critical values. The fully
implemented scheme is illustrated in Fig 3.

Fig 3. A summary of the proposed project including the full impeller installation.

(1) Year One

1. Real-time Lake Monitoring: Install a real-time Lake Diagnostic System (LDS)4
in a deep part of Lake Ohrid equipped with 50 thermistors over the depth, two
conductivity sensors (one at the surface and one at depth) and a full
meteorological station 2 m above the water surface. Install stream loggers at the
major inflow and outflow
2. Set Up 3D Models Under ARMS: Use the data from tasks 1 above, to set up a
real-time 3D model of the hydrodynamics and the biology (ELCOM-CAEDYM)5
(focus on the inorganic chemistry in order to predict water column stability)
running under the real-time scheduler ARMS6:
3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations
to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on
the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep
layer.

(2) Year 2
1. Carry Out Process Field Experiment: Once the models are running in real-time
it is necessary to carry out a detailed field investigation to validate the major
processes maintaining the long periods of deep water stability and deep water
overturn. This involves probing the lake with the new Multi-Scale-Profiler (MSP)
a vehicle that can document both the turbulent and fine-scale hydrodynamic
properties of the lake and most of the major water quality parameters. This will be
4

The Lake Diagnostic System is a tool for long-term reservoir water quality monitoring and
management, measuring water column temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and
chlorophyll-a stratification and meteorology above the water surface. The data is transmitted to the
shore station, where it is displayed on the web in pseudo real-time. Visit OLARIS on the main menu to
see the real-time data from LDS installed around the world. The LDS is particularly well known for its
fast response and high resolution thermistor chain, allowing complete measurement of the water
column stratification in <5s.
5

ELCOM (Estuary and Lake Computer Model) is a three-dimensional hydrodynamics model used for
predicting the velocity, temperature and salinity distribution in natural water bodies subjected to
external environmental forcing such as wind stress, surface heating or cooling. ELCOM can be run
either in isolation for hydrodynamic studies, or coupled with the Computational Aquatic Ecosystem
Dynamics Model (CAEDYM) ian aquatic ecological model. CAEDYM consists of a series of
mathematical equations representing the major biogeochemical processes influencing water quality.
Aquatic Realtime Management System (ARMS) is an automated software package that manages
historical and real-time water resource data, has a user friendly visualisation interface, posts
information on the internet, provides real-time and forecast numerical modelling capabilities,
sends messages via email on the status of water resources, and computes decision support
indices to aid in operational management. ARMS will be configured to run ELCOM-CAEDYM.
6

two 5 day experiments, one at the period of maximum stability (around Aug/Sept)
and one at the time of lake overturn (March)
2. LDS and ARMS maintenance
3. Design Impeller System: It is envisage to design a 10 impeller system that
would be running under automatic control via ARMS using the outcome from the
models and the LDS. The design would explore whether it is best to keep eroding
the water column stability throughout the year as a whole or only during the
month of overturn. Prototype testing of suitable impellers in Lake Como (Morillo
et al. 2009) showed that a 4KW Flygt impeller can set up a submerged jet with an
entrained flow at 50 m of around 40 m3s-1. Given that the volume of the very deep
hypolimnion is around 20% of the total lake volume (~10 x 109 m3) 10 impellers
would require about 9 months of mixing time spread over say 9 years or one
winter month per year.
3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations
to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on
the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep
layer.

(3) Year Three

1. Impeller Installation: Such installations have already been tested in Lake Como by
the proponents and are based on a modified version of a standard ITT Flygt mixer.
The cost is indicative as the exact number of impellers would be determined in Task
5. The running costs are minimal as each impeller is only 4 KW. When fully
functional the model predictions will provide the control on the impeller thrust to
slightly augment the natural deep mixing to ensure that a total overturn will take place
at a frequency of between 5 and 10 years as is the case now. This will ensure that the
deep water never posed a threat to the biota residing in the mid and surface waters.

2. LDS and ARMS maintenance

3. Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected stations to
gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would be on the
primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very deep layer.
(4) Ongoing Annual After Year 3
(i) Lake Diagnostic System
(ii) 3D Models
(iii) Monthly Water Sampling: Carry out monthly water samples at selected
stations to gain validation data for the ecological model CAEDYM. Focus would
be on the primary production in the surface layer and the chemistry of the very
deep layer.
(iv) Impellers

References
Artinyan, E. , Todorovik, O., Selenica, A., 2004, Water and energy budget of the
Ohrid Lake basin for 1990: Part A) Water and energy budget of a land site near the
lake the Ohrid meteorological station; Part B) Estimation of the lake monthly water
budget for 1990. BALWOIS 2004 Ohrid, FY Republic of Macedonia, 25-29 May
2004.
Imberger, J., 1987, Mixing in river underflow:, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
(ASCE), 113 (6) 697-715.
Marti, C.L. and Imberger, J., 2006, "Dynamics of the benthic boundary layer in a
strongly forced stratified lake", Hydrobiologia, 568 (1): 217-233.
Matzinger, A., Spirkovski, Z., Patceva, S., and Wuest, A., 2006, Sensitivity of
Ancient Lake Ohrid to Local Anthropogenic Impacts and Global Warming, J. Great
Lakes Res. 32:158179 Internat. Assoc. Great Lakes Res.,

Morillo, S., Imberger, J., Antenucci, J.P. and Copetti, D., 2009, "Using impellers to
distribute local nutrient loadings in a stratified lake; Lake Como, Italy", ASCE Journal
of Hydraulic Engineering, 135(7): 564-574
Samuel, I., Outcalt, H., Allen, L., Modeling The Annual Thermal Regime Of Lake
Ohrid, Yugoslavia, Using Daily Weather Data, Ecological Modelling, 15 (1982)
165-184
Salmaso, N., 2005, Effects of climatic fluctuations and vertical mixing on the
interannual trophic variability of Lake Garda, Italy, Limnol. Oceanogr., 50(2),
2005, 553565
Salmaso N., Mosello R., Garibald L., Decet F., Brizzi M. C. and Paolo Cordella, P.,
2003, Vertical mixing as a determinant of trophic status in deep lakes: a case study
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in the Lake Ohrid region of Albania and Macedonia, Lakes & Reservoirs, Research
& Management, Volume 6, Issue 3, pages 237242.
Stankovic, S., 1960, The Balkan Lake Ohrid and its living world, In : W.
Ultgeverij Dr. Junk, Editor, Monographiae Biologiae Voc. IX, Den Haag,
Netherlands.
Vogel et al., 2010, Spatial variability of recent sedimentation in Lake Ohrid
(Albania/Macedonia) a complex interplay of natural and anthropogenic factors and
their possible impact on biodiversity patterns Biogeosciences Discuss., 7, 3911
3930, 2010.
Wagner, B., Vogel1, H., Zanchetta G., and Sulpizio, R., 2010, Environmental
changes on the Balkans recorded in the sediments from lakes Prespa and Ohrid,
Biogeosciences Discuss., 7, 33653392, 2010.
Wagner, B., Reicherter, K., Daut G., Wessels, M., Matzinger, A., Schwalb, A.,
Spirkovski, Z., Sanxhaku, M., 2008, The potential of Lake Ohrid for long-term
palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology 259 (2008) 341356.
Wagner, B., Wilke, T., Krastel-Gudegast, S., Grazhdani, A., Reicherter, K.,
Trajanovski, S., and Zanchetta, G., 2009, Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation
Conditions in Lake Ohrid, SCOPSCO Workshop Scientific Drilling, No. 7, March
2009.
B. Wagner, A. Lotter, N. Nowaczyk, J. Reed, A. Schwalb, R. Sulpizio, V. Valsecchi,
M. Wessels and G. Zanchetta, 2009, A 40,000-year record of environemental
change from ancient Lake Ohrid (Albania, Macedonia) , Journal of Paleolimnology
41 (3) (2009), pp. 407430.