Nature of Research | Organization(s) | Location | Description | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloom Control | USACE | United States | The USACE is evaluating chemicals that are only effective against cyanobacteria to control harmful algal blooms in reservoirs. | http://www.stormingmedia.us/75/7534/A753494.html |
| Bloom Control | USDA | United States | The USDA is researching how to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous loading from agricultural lands and they are developing methods of controlling blooms, such as and algaecide that can eliminate cyanobacteria without harming other phytoplankton communities. They are also researching ways to detect toxin-producing algae with non-satellite remote sensing methods to control blooms faster. | http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/programs/programs.htm?NP_CODE=206 |
| Bloom Formation | ECOHAB (supported by NOAA and EPA) | Great Lakes | ECOHAB is researching interactions between grazers (zebra mussels), nutrients, and harmful algal blooms. | http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/brochures/ecohab.pdf |
| Cyanobacteria and Toxins | OHHI | Great Lakes | OHHI is conducting research on Lake Erie to find new freshwater species of phytoplankton capable of producing harmful algal blooms and toxins that can harm humans. | http://www.cop.noaa.gov/stressors/extremeevents/hab/habhrca/GL_fact_09-06.pdf |
| Drinking Water, Taste and Odor Compounds | Metropolitan Water District of Southern California | California | The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is researching ways to predict and manage taste and odor compounds from HABs in drinking water. | http://www.epa.gov/cyano_habs_symposium/abstracts/occurance/poster/izaguire_special_habs_cyanotoxins.pdf |
| Drinking Water, Toxins | EPA’s NCER | New York | NCER is supporting research to make a microarray assay to monitor cyanobacteria and toxins in drinking water. | http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/INDEX.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/7841 |
| Human Health Effects | CDC | United States | The CDC is looking into the human health effects of harmful algal blooms in an effort to prevent these effects. They are providing assistance to state agencies that are evaluating the effectiveness of water treatment to remove algal toxins and trying to understand how algal toxins impact public health. Their focus is on drinking water. They are also assessing how humans are affected by toxins during exposure from recreational activities and investigating how lakeshore communities are affected by events such as harmful algal blooms. | http://www.cdc.gov/hab/cyanobacteria/default.htm |
| Human Health Effects | Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and University of New Hampshire | New England | The neurotoxin BMAA produced by certain cyanobacteria may be linked to certain neurological disorders such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer’s, but more research needs to be done to prove that there is a connection. These institutions, as well as many others, are conducting research to verify or disprove the connection. | http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/beaches/documents/20090701wkshp_cyano4.pdf |
| Modeling | B-Blooms | Belgium | The B-Blooms project that aimed to monitor Belgium lakes is also contributing to the development of a model that would be able to predict when harmful algal blooms will occur. They will use an ANN model. | http://www.bblooms.ulg.ac.be/english/intro_frameset_en.htm |
| Modeling | USGS Lake Studies Team in the USGS Wisconsin Water Science Center | Wisconsin | This team has applied eutrophication models such as BATHTUB to estimate how a lake will respond to certain management measures or to see the water quality changes due to nutrient loading. They have also used process-driven watershed, hydrodynamic, and water-quality models. | http://wi.water.usgs.gov/lakes/index.html |
| Predicting Blooms, Nutrient Loading | North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research | Wisconsin | This organization has done many studies on phosphorous loading, water clarity, and predicting harmful algal blooms. | http://lter.limnology.wisc.edu/findings.html |
| Remote Sensing Technology | WisconsinView | Great Lakes | WisconsinView does research in remote sensing of lakes and focuses on measuring lake clarity from satellites in Wisconsin Lakes, multi-sensor integration, and regional water color product development in the Great Lakes. | http://www.wisconsinview.org/research/ |
| Taste and Odor Compounds | USGS Kansas Algal Toxin Research Team | Kansas | This research team focuses on the toxin and taste/odor compound problem of harmful algal blooms. They recognize that there has been little research done on the distribution, occurrence, and concentration of compounds produced by harmful algal blooms. There is also little known about what causes taste and odor compounds and toxins to occur during a bloom. | http://ks.water.usgs.gov/studies/qw/cyanobacteria/ |
| Taste and Odor Compounds – Predictive | USGS Kansas Water Science Center | Kansas | The USGS Kansas Water Science Center has developed tools to predict taste and odor episodes caused by cyanobacteria in drinking water sources based on monitoring light, temperature, conductivity, and turbidity. They are working to develop and use it to predict things such as toxin production. | http://ks.water.usgs.gov/studies/qw/cheney/cheney.reservoir.html |
| Toxin Analysis, Remote Sensing Technology, Modeling | NOAA MERHAB Lower Great Lakes Project | Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Champlain | This project is a comparative study on Lake Erie, Ontario, and Champlain using new tools to detect, track, predict, and respond to harmful algal blooms and toxins. They are finding spatial and temporal distribution of toxins and the presence of algal species using real-time PCR. | http://www.esf.edu/merhab/index.asp |
| Toxins | EPA NERL | United States | They have found a way to use green technology to remove microcystins from drinking water. Titanium dioxide photocatalysis effectively removes microcystin-LR instead of increasing the amount of soluble toxin as other treatments do. | http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es801637z |
| Toxins – Treatment | AwwaRF and the City of Cocoa, FL | Florida | These cities and organizations are characterizing treatment options for removing toxins from drinking water. The three toxin treatment methods tested were removal through membranes, oxidation, and adsorption. | http://waterrf.org/ProjectsReports/ExecutiveSummaryLibrary/2839_ExecutiveSummary.pdf |
| Various | Harmful Algal Research and Response National Environmental Science Strategy 2005-2015 (HARRNESS) | United States | HARRNESS is the national plan for algal toxins and harmful algal blooms. It will focus on bloom ecology and dynamics, toxins, food webs and fisheries, and public health and socioeconomic impacts. The program was created to coordinate people and groups to address the problem of harmful algal blooms. They realize that freshwater habs are not covered by many of the other programs so they intend to address freshwater harmful algal blooms. | http://www.esa.org/HARRNESS/ |
| Various | NOAA GLERL | Great Lakes | NOAA GLERL is investigating the influence of environmental factors on blooms of Microcystis, researching the genomics of microcystin synthetase gene and the accumulation of microcystins in fish, and are also working on forecasting and detection tools. | http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/by_subject.html |
| Various | USGS | United States | The USGS recognizes that most of the harmful algal blooms research that has been done has focused on marine ecosystems. They do research on harmful algal blooms and know that more information is needed about the occurrence of blooms, methods for analyzing toxins, taste/odor compounds, and identifying algae, long-term studies, and ways predict and detect blooms. | http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2006/3147/pdf/FS2006_3147.pdf |
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