UNC Researcher - Future Bright For Toxic Cyanobacteria Blooms As Climate Destabilizes

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Add this menace to the list of looming environmental disasters blamed on climate change: more pond scum. The blue-green algae that coats stagnant ponds and blooms in water reservoirs in hot summer months will thrive in a changing climate, said Hans Paerl of the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences. And more pond scum could trigger more sickness. The 40 to 50 harmful species of the blue-green algae have been linked to digestive, neurological and liver diseases in humans. Municipal water plants across the United States spend millions to treat it.

Blue-green algae, known scientifically as cyanobacteria, are more prevalent in developing countries but occur in water bodies around the world from the Great Lakes to Florida's Lake Okeechobee to Falls Lake, Raleigh's water reservoir. "This is a worldwide problem," said Paerl, co-author of a perspective piece Thursday in the journal Science.

It's well known that nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizer runoff and in treated sewage feed blue-green algae growth. Now, Paerl suggests, scientists can factor in temperatures and global warming as well. Warmer weather has created longer growing seasons. It has allowed the blue-green algae range to expand from Florida northward throughout the Southeast. When algae blooms die and decompose, they pull oxygen from the water and can cause fish kills.

"The temperature change is playing into hands of blue-green algae," Paerl said. "We have to be more diligent in reducing nutrients to slow down expansion into lakes that are now amenable to these blooms."

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