Harmful Algae Blooms Increase as Lake Waters Warm
Summary
The warming waters of central Europe's most popular holiday destination, Lake Zurich, has become victim of algae blooms that cause harm to the visitors and animals of the lake. This isn't just affecting Lake Zurich, but many lakes around the globe. Algae blooms occur when eutriphication, an influx of nutrients, help algae grow. The growth of algae affect animals living in the waters because organisms such as cyanobacteria take up oxygen from the animals in the water and create harmful toxins. Cyanobacteria need phosphorus and nitrogen to grow, so scientist found a way to eliminate cyanobacteria when they realized their source of growth. To restore the lakes, the amount of phosphorus was reduced by implementing sewage treatment programs. However, this only reduced phosphorus and not nitrogen. The cyanobacteria population went down, but a new bacteria grew. This new bacteria, P. rubescens, needed little phosphorus to grow and lots of nitrogen. The P. rubescens population began to thrive when lake water temperatures began to rise due to less mixing of deep and surface waters. Normally, the waters would mix below 100 meters, killing the bacteria, but of lately, the water has not mixed well, keeping these photosynthetic bacteria alive and growing. This bacteria has the ability to create neurotoxins that have been linked to ALS. The number of links is small, but overtime the link could accumulate to large numbers.
My Reflection
After reading this article, I learned even more about algae blooms. In class and for homework, I learned that algae blooms affected the animals that reside in the waters that are effected, but after reading this article, I learned that it can also cause harms to humans as well. The biggest shock to me was learning that cyanobacteria can produce a neurotoxin that has attributed to ALS. I want to know how this bacteria produces such a toxin and why they produce it. Does the environment they are in contribute to the production of the toxin? Algae blooms are spreading from lake to lake across the continent and is rapidly affecting large open bodies of water. With algae blooms increasing, something has to be done to stop the growth because if not, we could see whole marine ecosystems wiped out from dead zones and even more cases of ALS. P. rubescens could be one of many different cyanobacteria that have negative effects on animals and humans. If algae blooms don't decrease, we could see many more species of cyanobacteria that cause even worse harm to the environment, marine ecosystems and humans than P. rubescens.