BOWLING GREEN, Ohio – Bowling Green State University has been awarded $5.2 million to help understand and prevent toxic algal blooms that harm bodies of water around the world.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Science Foundation chose BGSU to establish a Lake Erie Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health.
This is a big deal, part of $30 million awarded across the United States to “bring together scientists doing basic research on the oceans and Great Lakes with those in biology and human health to study processes that affect millions of people,” said Science Foundation program director Hedy Edmonds.
Harmful algal blooms threaten recreation and drinking water in Lake Erie each summer, especially in the western basin near Toledo. Toledo in 2014 went three days without fresh water because of a bloom. Cleveland even had a taste of a bloom over the July 4 holiday weekend, at Edgewater Beach.
Nitrogen and phosphorus, most of it from the Maumee River watershed, create the the mat of toxic blue-green algae, but scientists are still studying what exactly makes it spread. And environmentalists are trying to cut down on phosphorus flowing into the lake.
Officially announced at a news conference today, the Lake Erie Center will study how environmental factors promote or constrain blooms, what factors influence toxin production, and how other microbes influence bloom growth and toxicity.
“As a public university we have an obligation to serve the public good,” BGSU President Rodney Rogers said in a news release. “We do that through research that works to address the real-world issues threatening Ohio, the country and the world. This grant from the NSF and NIEHS is a strong show of support for — and recognition of — the quality and importance of our research into harmful algal blooms.”
The center, headed BGSU professor George Bullerjahn, will involve eight other universities and research institutions:
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- Ohio Sea Grant
- Ohio State University
- SUNY – College of Environmental Science and Forestry
- University of Michigan
- University of North Carolina
- University of Tennessee
- University of Toledo
- Michigan State University
The center, according to the Science Foundation, will lead outreach activities, including with charter boat captains to develop a database on the severity of the blooms in Lake Erie. And it will work with universities in Florida and Washington, for example, to compare the lake blooms with the Red Tide that infested the Gulf of Mexico -- and with algae around the world.
“The grant provides BGSU the resources to be a national leader, and builds upon our prior collaborations,” Bullerjahn said. “The center greatly expands our scientific capacity. As a result, we can address threats to water quality not only in Ohio, but in large lakes around the world. Center participants have collaborators in China and Africa, regions that are routinely plagued with similar harmful algal blooms.”