Overview
- Algae season has begun on Lake Erie. Researchers are noticing that harmful algae blooms are changing. Blooms have typically begun in July and reached a short peak in August, he said. However, blooms over the past decade have been starting sooner, reaching their peak intensity earlier and the duration of that peak has become longer. In addition to starting earlier, this year’s bloom is starting in a different location. Dr. Richard Stumpf said NOAA satellite imagery shows algae scums began forming off Monroe on Monday, June 24, and the bloom has grown to about eight square miles in size.
- Lake Erie is the 12th largest lake on the planet and provides drinking water source for 11 million people. It’s the smallest and shallowest of the Great Lakes. Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario all border Erie’s Western Basin, which is particularly vulnerable to toxic blooms. While algae are a natural presence in freshwater systems, large harmful outbreaks are linked to excessive levels of phosphorus in the lake waters.
- Coming into contact with the toxic algae, or swallowing algae-laden water, can cause rashes, vomiting, numbness, and difficulty breathing, among other symptoms. The toxic algae threaten not only drinking water but rob oxygen from the waters creating dead zones where fish are unable to survive.
- A few years ago, the algae in Lake Erie were so bad that swimming was dangerous, and the lake water contaminated the Toledo, Ohio water supply.
About Dr. Richard Stumpf (Courtesy of NOAA)
Dr. Richard (Rick) Stumpf leads NOAA’s efforts to translate forecasts of harmful algal blooms from research to operations. He also tries to make satellites useful for coastal environmental problems, such as figuring out how deep the water is and finding pond scum.
Stumpf has forty years of experience in coastal oceanography, with particular interest in harmful algal blooms. He has developed methods to use satellite data and modeling to understand coastal eutrophication, habitat and wetlands change, shallow bathymetry, and algal bloom monitoring and forecasting. He received a B.A. degree in the Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Marine Studies from the University of Delaware. He has worked on all the US coastal and Great Lakes states except Connecticut, Georgia, Oregon, and Minnesota.
Transcription
David Fair: This is 89 one WEMU. And welcome to another edition of Issues of the Environment. I'm David Fair, and, this week, we're going to have a conversation we have every summer. Although it's a little earlier this year, the Lake Erie algae season has begun and will continue to bloom. But the algae blooms in Lake Erie are changing. It was just a decade ago, the toxic algae shut down the Toledo, Ohio, drinking water supply for about a half million people for three days. That impacted Monroe, Michigan residents as well. Since then, there have been efforts to deal with the agricultural runoff responsible for the blooms, but with some limited success. Now, a rapidly warming climate--that has to be considered as well. So, what will this year's bloom bring? And will it worsen in the years to come? I certainly don't know, but our guest does. Doctor Richard Stumpf is an oceanographer and forecaster for algae blooms for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And thank you for making time for us today. I appreciate it!
Dr. Richard Stumpf: Thank you, David! Happy to be with you!
David Fair: I believe it was June 24th of this year that algal blooms first began to appear in Lake Erie, down near Monroe. In the months since, how significantly has the bloom grown?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: It's been growing slowly. Compared to last year, when it started early July, it grew much faster. And I think that change and growth has to do with some of the weather patterns. Unlike some of the rest of the country, you've actually had a little cooler weather and particularly a bit windier up on Lake Erie. The thing's slowing down the growth this year.
David Fair: So, these toxic algal blooms are rated on a severity scale of 1 to 10. 7.5, as I understand it, is considered to be severe. What is your initial forecast for the Erie bloom this year?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: Our forecast this year is,5.5 or between 4.5 and six. That would indicate a moderate to little above moderately severe bloom. We're also monitoring the rainfall and runoff for this month because July loads do have a factor--can be significant--on an increase in the intensity of the bloom. And some of the weather patterns that have led to the flooding you've heard about out in Iowa, they're not going to produce flooding in the Lake Erie area, but they may produce some very localized rain, and it depends on where that ends up. So, we're watching that. We'll do an update at the end of July.
David Fair: You mentioned that, last year, the bloom really took shape in July and obviously started in June this year. What do we attribute the earlier start to?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: Well, the simple answer is climate change. But it's a more complicated answer than it's just getting warmer. We've looked at temperatures, like in May/June and the warm water that the sign of bacteria grow well in. The timing of that hasn't changed much. So, it's not like the lake is getting warmer earlier. But we've got some indication that some of the spring/late winter temperatures may be a factor. So, what we think we're getting--and we are now conducting some experiments and analyzes on this--is that the spring bloom is changing. And the spring bloom is diatoms--the good algae, the algae when you talk about the food chain: they're at the base of the food chain. They feed all the perch and walleye and, ultimately, that people go fish for. And we think those blooms might be changing. And that's what we're going to try to look at because they are competitors with cyanobacteria. And if the competition leaves early, that provides an opening. So, that's our hypothesis right now. And that's what we're trying to test.
David Fair: Issues of the Environment and our conversation with Doctor Richard Stumpf come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continues on 89 one WEMU. It's been a decade since the Toledo water supply was contaminated enough that the water was deemed unsafe to drink. For those that lived in this area back in 2014, we remember the hordes of people coming north and emptying all the stores of bottled water. Would you say that the likelihood, environmentally, for another such incident has diminished, or is it increasing?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: The likelihood of such an incident occurring is extremely low, but not necessarily because the environment has changed. It's because of our our ability to monitor.
David Fair: Right.
Dr. Richard Stumpf: So, 2014...well, my group does a lot of satellite monitoring of the bloom. And we were able to produce about an image or two a week. And we were able to pick out the bloom, but it's rather low resolution. And now, we have much higher resolution data just about every day. In addition, there's now instruments in the water that can identify the presence of cyanobacteria also. So it's actually a couple of hours for water to get from the intake, say, for Toledo to the actual treatment. And so, they get an early warning from our side where we have not only satellite, but we model the transport of the plume to the vicinity. They have the sensors there, so there are several levels of early warning that just simply weren't available in 2014.
David Fair: Now we know the source of the blooms that phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural runoff is a major problem when it comes to water contamination. I don't want to unnecessarily submerge you in politics, but as you work to prepare forecasts and continue exploring and studying the nature of algal blooms, do you keep current on state policies regarding runoff to gauge differences in the algal blooms?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: I pay close attention to what's being done. The policies and plans on farm fields--there's progress being made on the percent of fields that have implemented strategies to reduce phosphorus. There's a number of them. I can't possibly go into them, and I'm not the best one to talk about all of it, but it has to do with how fertilizers are applied. Are wetlands put in? Is there edge of field? There's a number of things. And so, each one of those come into play. One thing we also we look at is the concentration of phosphorus. And I worked very closely with Laura Johnson, professor at Heidelberg University in Ohio, who collects a lot of the nutrient data. So, we pay very close attention to the concentrations, because that tells us how effective or how we're starting to see changes. Right now, there's hints of reductions in concentration of phosphorus, which would be about right, because it's not going to all happen instantaneously. You know, if all the farmers did something this year, it's going to be a year or a couple of years before things really start kicking in, because there's a lot of phosphorus just out there right now.
David Fair: Once again, this is 89 one WEMU. And we're talking with the oceanographer, Doctor Richard Stumpf. He's from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We're talking about algal blooms in Lake Erie. Now you touched on this just a bit, but I want to take it a little further. The process of forecasting obviously changed from, say, a decade ago because of the advances in technology. Where is it headed?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: One of the areas we're looking is trying to forecast toxicity, so how toxic the bloom is. What we're working on are methods to take the available toxin data from the field. We related to the chlorophyl and the other pigments. So, we're establishing relationships between the toxin and those in order to do a better job of identifying that. We're also looking at what actually drives the toxin production. And that's quite important for how toxic the bloom is when it starts. In 2014, the cells were actually producing a lot of toxins. In fact, if we look at that, compared to the years since then, that bloom started off more toxic than any of the years since then, meaning every cell was producing more toxin, which was actually part of the problem. So, we're starting to understand a bit more about how why the toxins produced. And I should say the evidence is that's not actually intended as a toxin. It's a molecule that helps the cells manage some mitigation stress from their metabolism. And unfortunately, it's really toxic to mammals, to people, to dogs. But it's not it's not intended that way. So, because of that, the environmental factors are really important on driving these. And the research--we've been making progress...we, the scientific community, has been making real progress in understanding that. So, we hope we'll be able to do a better job there. Sometimes, the blooms aren't particularly toxic. In fact, at the end of the season, they can be quite disgusting. The scums will always be dangerous, but the toxin levels actually tend to decrease towards the end of the season.
David Fair: Interesting! So, these advancements in both modeling and how we assess toxicity will ultimately better protect us from exposure to contamination and the resulting public health issues it possibly presents, right?
Dr. Richard Stumpf: Yes. That will definitely help. The other I will add is making sure we understand the various ways the phosphorus gets into the lake, because that leads to better strategies for controlling the blooms overall. And there's a lot of progress on that. Our work has been on the timing of the phosphorus going into the lake because that's critical. It matters when. And then which fields really matter-- are there are other sources--external sources. So, all of those pieces are coming together to improve our ability to forecast these blooms. And then, if we can forecast them, if we understand enough to forecast, then we have a strategy for what to do about them.
David Fair: Well, it's been a real education for me today! So, thank you so much for making time and talking with us today, Doctor Stumpf! I appreciate it!
Dr. Richard Stumpf: Okay! Thank you! Pleasure to be with you!
David Fair: That is Richard Stumpf, an oceanographer and algal bloom forecast expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. He's been our guest on Issues of the Environment. For more information about our discussion today, stop by our website at wemu.org when you get a minute. Issues of the Environment is produced in partnership with the office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner. You hear it every Wednesday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89 one WEMU FM, Ypsilanti.
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