Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2020AR239B

Why and When does Microcystin Exceed Recreational Guidelines at Lake Fayetteville?

Institute: Arkansas
Year Established: 2020 Start Date: 2020-03-01 End Date: 2021-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $12,665 Total Non-Federal Funds: $25,331

Principal Investigators:

Project Summary: The occurrence of microcystin and other algal toxins in lakes and reservoirs is widespread across theUSA, and it even occurs locally in northwest Arkansas. In particular, the recreational lake, LakeFayetteville, has experienced microcystin concentrations over 8 μg Lâ€1 in the early growing season in2019. However, as nitrogen supply in the water column decreased throughout the growing season sodid microcystin concentrations. The objective of this project is to continue the near weekly monitoringof water quality at Lake Fayetteville, including dissolved and total nutrients, microcystin, chlorphyllâ€aand phycocyanin; three recreational sites will be sampled ~46 times during the project year (138 totalsamples). The goal is observe temporal patterns in microcytin and water quality through the 2020 andevaluate how microcystin changes in response to dissolved nutrient supply and other environmentalfactors. This project should lead to the design of additional experiments to understand what triggersharmful algal blooms to produce toxins at concentrations exceeding recreational guidelines.