COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Opening Pandora's Box with a Biotic Key: Can Cyanobacterial Blooms in Nutrient-Poor Lakes Accelerate Eutrophication?

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AbstractThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Freshwater ecosystems provide vital ecological services important to human well being such as drinking water, food resources, and waste water treatment. These systems are vulnerable to disruption of these services if human activities and their impacts exceed the capacity of the system to absorb or buffer them. It has been long known that excessive nutrient loads to freshwater systems can result in a reduction in water quality and blooms in nuisance algae. What has not been understood is the role of biological agents. Initial results indicate that they can accelerate this shift from a nutrient poor lake to a eutrophic lake by facilitating the release of accumulated nutrients from the sediments. This award will explore the role that Gloeotrichia echinulata plays in accelerating eutrophication. The research will explore how G. echinulata affects both nitrogen and phosphorus availability as well as whole lake metabolism. Through field observations, laboratory and field experiments, paleoecology, modeling and comparative studies, the PIs will elucidate the role of Gloeotrichia blooms as a driver of eutrophication. The research is timely and will have immediate resource management application, given the recent expansion of G. echinulata into lakes across the Northeast. The project identified a number of activities (student training, lake management associations) which will lead to broadened impacts of the research. The PIs are active participants in the international lakes network, Global Lakes Ecological Network, thus ensuring the results will be rapidly disseminated on a global scale.