Is the future blue-green?

Freshwater lakes and reservoirs cut across Canada provide numerous services for local communities ranging from drinking water to recreation. Unfortunately, these same ecosystems are susceptible to a changing climate and nutrient loading. Cyanobacteria, a common photosynthetic group of microbes in freshwater lakes, are known to grow in excess (or bloom) when nutrients loads are high. Under these conditions, cyanobacteria may have detrimental effects on human, animal, and ecosystem health. 

Solving the problem of blooms requires an understanding of how the physical environment links to geochemistry and bloom ecology, and this understanding must exist on the timescale upon which blooms develop and collapse – minutes to hours to weeks. And while solving blooms is a grand challenge, managing their impact is a key interim goal. This project is designed to address key environmental factors that drive bloom onset, duration, and cessation while also evaluating the impact blooms have on ecosystem services, working with ecosystem managers to understand how we might mitiate blooms, and how we can manage bloom risk.