Vibrant green algae overwhelming Lake Erie visible from outer space

Every summer, a toxic algae bloom turns part of Lake Erie green, and although the primary weather factors all point toward a record-breaking bloom in 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Water Quality Research (NCWQR) and other partners think otherwise.

These highly-toxic algae blooms are so massive that their vibrant green colors are are easily spotted in Lake Erie from space.

The blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, that blooms in Lake Erie is capable of producing microcystin, a liver toxin that can be harmful to humans and wildlife. Research on how the toxin can affect humans is still ongoing, but the Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists a few symptoms from exposure to harmful algae blooms as abdominal pain, neurological symptoms and vomiting. Pets are also in danger of falling victim to this toxin and can even die from exposure to it.

NOAA posts updated bulletins on the status of the bloom the season progresses.

The NCWQR monitors the amount of nutrients that the nearby rivers feed to Lake Erie, which in turn feed the algal bloom.

"What we have found is that the amount of phosphorus that comes out of the Maumee River from March to July does a really good job of predicting how big the bloom is going to be in the lake later in the summer," Director of the NCWQR at Heidelberg University Laura Johnson said.

About 85% of the phosphorus comes from the flow from the Maumee River, according to Johnson. The remaining 15% is from sources such as septic and sewage systems and industrial input.

"What ends up being the weather factors that are really important for this forecast is basically the type of rain that we get from March through July," she added.

With more rain comes more runoff with phosphorus into the river, which in turn means more phosphorus is fed into the lake.

According to Johnson, this should have been one of the bloom's most severe years given the exceptionally wet weather there earlier this year.

"We should have been predicting one of the very worst blooms that we've had and now, yeah, it's going to be a bad bloom, but we're not expecting something as extreme as something at the top of the charts," Johnson said.

NOAA bases the 1-10 measurement scale on the amount of algae over a sustained period of time. Although technically the highest a bloom can measure is a severity of 10, the severity index reached 10.5 during the 2015 bloom. The severity index reached 10 in 2011, making it the second-most severe year.

The forecast is predicting a significant harmful algal bloom in Lake Erie this summer with a severity forecast of 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10, though it could range between 6 and 9.

Although the rain was definitely present in the equation of feeding an algal bloom, the same cannot be said of the nutrients.

"Nutrients can come from a lot of places, but everything we've seen suggests it's coming from agriculture," Johnson said.

Buckets of rain that would have swept those nutrients into the Maumee also prevented farmers from planting the majority of their crops on time this year.

"There were so many fields that weren't even planted that we actually saw a 31% lower phosphorus load [from the Maumee River] of one particular form of phosphorous," Johnson said.

The set target to reduce the amount of phosphorus coming from the Maumee River is 40%.

That form of phosphorus is a dissolved form that farmers use as fertilizer, which Johnson theorized farmers weren't able to apply as much in the fall because of the wet weather.

"I would have never expected such a big drop-off in one year," Johnson said.

Rather than ceasing the application of fertilizer that contains phosphorus, Johnson suggests a more nuanced approach by farmers might be a solution. Instead of spreading the phosphorus pellets across the surface, she suggests that farmer should be injecting the phosphorous in only the rows where the plants are situated, a few inches into the ground where they wouldn't interact with rain water as easily.

"We think the issue we're seeing is fairly nuanced," Johnson said. "It's not irresponsible, over-application of phosphorus, but rather I really feel it's a placement issue."

However, Johnson acknowledged that this more nuanced approach would possibly slow down the fertilizer application process, making it more difficult in seasons like the recent one where rain plagued the planting process. She also acknowledges there would be additional costs for farmers who would need new equipment to execute such a method.

Johnson believes that this goal of reducing phosphorus isn't something that is entirely out of reach and notes that it has been done before.

"We didn't make up these reductions and loads to be some sort of unattainable or never-attained target. This is something that we had in the '90s," Johnson said.

It was around 2003 when the blooms resurfaced due to a multitude of known factors -- and some that still remain a mystery.

Sometime between the '90s and early 2000s, something had changed and the blooms returned. Scientists are not sure what exactly happened, but Johnson notes that a few things that could have had these big impacts were the growth of small farms into larger ones along with their switch to a different type of cropping system. Another was an increase in flow in the Maumee River.

"[The flows] increased by 15% in the 2000s, so the combination of that, that would imply that we've gotten at least more water coming off of the land than we used to have," Johnson said. "Probably because of more intense storm events, but we think it's also associated with an increase in drainage as well."

Research still continues on what causes harmful algal blooms, according to NOAA. Parts of the puzzle in creating the blooms are mostly known, but how those pieces fit together is what has environmental scientists stumped.

Nutrient pollution, particularly nitrogen or phosphorus, and rising temperatures contribute to causing harmful algal blooms to occur more often and in new locations previously unaffected, according to NOAA.

"Studies indicate that many algal species flourish when wind and water currents are favorable," according to NOAA.

Favorable conditions for algal blooms include stagnant water or low-moving water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Warm waters are also necessary for a bloom.

During the summer of 2018, the algal bloom was much less severe than forecast due to a few possible factors. For one, the bloom started early, which NOAA theorizes was on account of rapid early warming of Lake Erie around the end of May. Later in September, a storm produced strong winds over the lake which the agency said severely disrupted the bloom to the point where it didn't recover. The algal bloom ended by the first week of October, which NOAA called one of the earliest ends of the bloom to have been observed.

In 2014, many residents of the Toledo, Ohio, area woke up to a "Do Not Drink" advisory for residents serviced by Toledo Water posted in the middle of the night. Chemical tests had confirmed that unsafe level of microcystin in the drinking water plant's finished water, according to EcoWatch. The environmental news organization said more than 400,000 people were left without drinking water.

The state of Ohio declared a state of emergency after the City of Toledo issued the advisory, and bottled water became a necessity. The fear of a repeat water crisis still echoes today.

Tim Davis, a harmful algae specialist with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, told NASA that the 2014 bloom wasn't necessarily larger or more intense than the years before, but it had had such a large impact because north winds had pushed the bloom near the water intake system for the city of Toledo.

There is still hope for Lake Erie. Years with large blooms that are followed by a year with droughts and smaller blooms has shown that the amount of phosphorus deposited into the lake each year, or lack thereof, does have a big impact, according to Johnson.

"If we make those reductions that are going into the lake, it will have an immediate impact. There's not enough other sources of phosphorus, including phosphorus that might be in the bottom of the lake, to sustain the bloom of the same size that we've seen," Johnson said. "So if we make these reductions, it should actually clean the lake."

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