A collaborative program that brings together NGO’s, agencies, and community members with the shared mission of collecting actionable data on cyanobacteria blooms, protecting public health, and relaying bloom information and testing results as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Who’s Involved – Leadership and Volunteers
The Cayuga Lake HABs monitoring program is led by a group of three environmental non-profits backed with some programmatic assistance from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. This Cayuga Lake Water Quality Consortium includes the Community Science Institute, Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, and Discover Cayuga Lake.
Every week, HABs Harrier volunteers patrol designated stretches of the Cayuga Lake shoreline and report whether or not a harmful algal bloom is observed. If a suspicious HAB is observed, the trained volunteer will rush a water sample to the Community Science Institute (CSI) lab in Ithaca. At the lab, CSI analysts perform a microscopic analysis to determine the cyanobacteria taxa present, the concentration of total chlorophyll a as a measure of bloom biomass, and the concentration of microcystin toxin.
The Cayuga Lake HABs Monitoring Program is unique in that it is the only volunteer HABs monitoring program in the state that includes a lab certified to conduct the microcystin toxin analysis. Having a local certified water testing lab allows the program to quickly report the results of bloom sample analysis. After a suspicious bloom has been reported, and a sample has been sent to the lab, results of sample analysis are posted on CSI’s online HABs Reporting Page within 24-72 hours at www.communityscience.org.
The goals of the monitoring program can be summarized as follows:
- To quickly provide information and alter the public of cyanobacteria bloom occurrences on Cayuga Lake in order to help manage the risks that these blooms may present.
- To develop information on HABs occurrences in order to better the understanding of HABs and the factors which may promote their development on Cayuga Lake.