41 results for tag: cyanobacteria stories
The US Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting algal bloom research at multiple facilities around Lake Erie over the past few years to help communities confront the challenge of keeping cyanobacterial toxins from reaching consumers’ taps. The first goal of this research is to determine how drinking water providers can optimize their existing facilities to maximize their treatment capabilities for removing cyanobacteria and their toxins.
The computational approaches we describe here, as well as conducting research via the tenets of open science, will allow us to make significant advances in cyanobacteria ecology and other related fields.
The New England region realized that coordinated efforts between grassroots organizations, resource management agencies, and research institutions were needed to regularly monitor for cyanobacteria and the nutrients that contribute to blooms.
Most people have never seen a bloom, and a vital first step in building public awareness about algal blooms is helping the public recognize what an algal bloom looks like. To help engage and educate the public about algal blooms and how to identify them, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency teamed up with the National Environmental Education Foundation and the North American Lake Management Society for the 2014 Algal Bloom Photo Contest.
Avian Vacuolar Myelinopathy has been documented with increasing frequency in southern freshwater bodies. Numerous pieces of evidence point toward a cyanotoxin as the cause of the disease.
Since the State of Ohio became aware of harmful levels of microcystin in one of its large inland lakes in 2009, officials have been fine-tuning the state’s monitoring, response, and outreach plans. In addition to carrying out the HAB strategy, and revising the strategy as needed, the State of Ohio continues to seek ways to address the root cause of HABs – excessive nutrients that enter the State’s waterways.
The Harmful Algal Blooms that make it into headlines are generally associated with public waters, and the occasional poisoning of much-loved pets that become poisoned when they visit public lakes. Arguably, however, the biggest impacts in terms of lost labor and income, are suffered by farmers who have to find alternative water sources when ponds become unusable for livestock.
Blooms occur in many Kansas lakes, but past official attention was limited to those blooms that caught enough public attention, or caused enough impact on economic and recreational activities, to demand state agency involvement. Current Harmful Algal Bloom sampling occurs on lakes where the Kansas Department of Health and Environment receives a formal complaint, as well as, on lakes which are publicly owned or managed, or are private but providing public water supply or are open to the general public for recreation.
Wind energy drives spring and fall turnover in stratified lakes, brings nutrients from deeper waters into the epilimnion, and transports nutrients and particulate material both vertically and horizontally in the ecosystem. Here we identify effects that wind can have on phytoplankton in shallow lakes, and illustrate with examples of four well-known lakes from around the world.
Current genetic tools available for monitoring and identifying cyanobacterial HABs focus on the DNA sequences of particular genes in the cyanobacterial genomes. The surest way to deduce toxigenicity is to look for the presence of toxin biosynthetic genes, and exciting advances in recent years have made this possible for each of the major toxins (microcystin, anatoxin-a, cylindrospermopsin, saxitoxin).
