HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS IN THE CATSKILLS PROVIDE MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

Abstract

Freshwater lakes provide many services to humans and are home to a diverse array of organisms that cannot survive elsewhere, making understanding and monitoring the quality of lake waters a critical priority in supporting these ecosystems. Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, are a recognized problem for lake ecosystems and human uses of lakes. Though many studies attempt to identify the cause of the problem, their occurrence cannot be attributed to one factor. The study site of the Catskill watershed is nearly 1,600 square miles of primarily heavily forested land. Farmland and suburban communities are dispersed around approximately 2,600 natural and manmade lakes, some of which are known to be especially prone to algal blooms. For this study, 15 years of aerial imagery of the Catskill watershed were analyzed via Google Earth Pro to determine the frequency of HABs. Several variables were considered, including year, lake surface area, lake perimeter, lake shape, temperature patterns, and precipitation patterns. HAB frequency is generally increasing between the years 2006 and 2019, apart from one year- 2009. Of the climate data, large rain events provided the clearest correlation to HAB occurrence, though no one variable was found to have a clear trend or pattern related to potential HAB frequency.