Lake Erie Algae Research

Anchor Lead: Just a couple of months ago Toledo banned fresh drinking water after a toxin was present due to an algae bloom. A Kent State professor is now doing research to help detect potential blooms, TV2’s Brian Ivey has the story.

The video story above demonstrates the research being done by Professor Ortiz, the importance of testing drinking water that comes from Lake Erie, and how algae affects boating and fishing.

New research is being conducted to study potentially harmful algae blooms on Lake Erie just months after microcystin, a dangerous toxin that can do damage to the liver and kidneys if ingested, was detected in high amounts in Toledo. Algae can cause issues for drinking water, fish and boaters.

Lake Erie is the shallowest of all the Great Lakes and this is one of the key factors that allows for large algae blooms to form. The lake gets relatively warm during the summer months and this enhances the formation of algae. Algae blooms, also known as algal blooms, are a rapid increase in the population in algae. A type of algae is cyanobacteria and certain types of the bacteria can potentially produce harmful toxins like what happened in Toledo.

Kent State Geology Professor Joseph Ortiz first started using remote sensing to research Lake Erie algae blooms at the beginning of this year.  The research led to him doing work with NASA to collect high-resolution images of the lake during the algae crisis.

Ortiz will present his work at the Water Research Symposium on Oct. 31, at Kent State. He will discuss how he is using a hyperspectral imager to help analyze the algae in order to better predict when harmful algae blooms could happen. More information on the Ortiz’s background and his current research, including his upcoming presentation on Halloween can be found here.