Increasingly severe cyanobacterial blooms and deep water hypoxia coincide with warming water temperatures in reservoirs.

ABSTRACT: Cyanobacterial blooms are expected to intensify and become more widespread with climate change and sustained nutrient pollution, subsequently increasing threats to lentic ecosystems, water quality, and human health. However, little is known about their rates of change because long-term monitoring data are rare, except for some well-studied individual lakes, which typically are large and broadly dispersed geographically. Using monitoring data spanning 1987-2018 for 20 temperate reservoirs located in the USA, we found that cyanobacteria cell densities mostly posed low-to-moderate human health risks until 2003-2005, after which cell densities rapidly increased. Increases were greatest in reservoirs with extensive agriculture in their watersheds, but even those with mostly forested watersheds

SUBMITTER: Smucker NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8168688 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature