Master of Science / Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering / Philip L. Barnes / Bloom-forming cyanobacteria are harmful to both environment and public health because of the release of water soluble toxins. This report provides a broad overview of cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins and the current state of knowledge about the bloom control management. Cyanobacteria blooms usually flourish in warm, lentic, and eutrophic waters. Several environmental factors such as temperature, nutrients, light intensity, and turbulence can affect cyanobacterial growth and the formation of bloom. Cyanobacteria can synthesize multiple types of toxins, which cause human and animal toxications worldwide. Cyanobacterial blooms also cause detrimental effects on aquatic ecosystems, and the taste and odor problems in drinking water supplies. Due to the adverse effects, treatments that are used for removing both cyanobacterial cells and aqueous cyanotoxins should be carried out once cyanobacterial blooms occur in freshwaters. Strategies based on physical, chemical, and biological methods are carried out to remove the cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins. All of these strategies have both advantages and disadvantages: some physical treatment methods can remove cyanotoxins within the intact molecules, but the cost is usually high and further processing is needed; some chemical methods are cheap and can degrade the cyanotoxins, however, the toxicological characterization of the chemical and the by-products needs to be investigated; some biological treatments are more environmentally friendly, but the long reaction time and some other external factors also pose some problems that affect the efficiency of the treatments. The paper concludes that the key to success is to find a reasonable balance between those advantages and disadvantages, and the specific conditions of each unique aquatic ecosystem should be taken into consideration. As well, some suggestions are also proposed for the further development of more robust monitoring and management strategies.

No description available.

Cyanobacteria blooms have increased in Lake Champlain due to excessive nutrient loading, resulting in negative impacts on the local economy and environmental health. While climate warming is expected to promote increasingly severe cyanobacteria blooms globally, predicting the impacts of complex climate changes on individual lakes is complicated by the many physical, chemical, and biological processes which mediate nutrient dynamics and cyanobacteria growth across time and space. Furthermore, processes influencing bloom development operate on a variety of temporal scales (hourly, daily, seasonal, decadal, episodic), making it difficult to identify important factors controlling bloom development using traditional methods or coarse temporal resolution datasets. To resolve these inherent problems of scale, I use 4 years of high-frequency biological, hydrodynamic, and biogeochemical data from Missisquoi Bay, Lake Champlain; 23 years of lake-wide monitoring data; and integrated process-based climate-watershed-lake models driven by regional climate projections to answer the following research questions: 1) To what extent do external nutrient inputs or internal nutrient processing control nutrient concentrations and cyanobacteria blooms in Lake Champlain; 2) how do internal and external nutrient inputs interact with meteorological drivers to promote or suppress bloom development; and 3) how is climate change likely to impact these drivers and the risk of cyanobacteria blooms in the future? I find that cyanobacteria blooms are driven by specific combinations of meteorological and biogeochemical conditions in different areas of the lake, and that in the absence of strong management actions cyanobacteria blooms are likely to become more severe in the future due to climate change.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:03:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LucianaCM_DISSERT.pdf: 1660460 bytes, checksum: dab339dbdc22796b2b9d04615f1dc630 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-04-17 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico / The potentially toxic cyanobacterial blooms in water bodies are spread across the globe, resulting in the loss of water quality and adverse effects on human health. In arid and semiarid regions, the hydrologic regime characterized by an annual cycle of drought and rain, change the volume and the retention time of the reservoir. Such changes affect the limnological characteristics and causing changes in composition and biomass community of cyanobacteria. The reservoir Cruzeta (Zmax = 8.7 m) is a eutrophic water supply source located in the semiarid tropical (Northeast Brazil). Raised the hypothesis that the hydrological regime of semi-arid tropical is a determining factor in the availability of resources in eutrophic water sources, which influences the composition of dominant species of cyanobacteria. The aim of this study was to analyze the changes in biomass and species composition of cyanobacteria for two annual hydrological cycles and evaluate factors drivers. The study was divided into five distinct periods (dry 2010, rain 2011, dry 2011, rain 2012, dry 2012). The dominant group found in all periods was Cyanobacteria (99% of total biomass), which contributed to the low diversity. The filamentous species Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii was present at both points in almost every study. The colonial species Microcystis panniformis and Sphaerocavum brasiliensis dominated only in periods with lower volumes of water. The diatoms contribute more to the biomass during the period of severe drought. The point near the dam (P1) had phytoplankton biomass larger than the point near the tributary (P2). The dominant species of colonial cyanobacteria lasted until the overflow in P1, and P2 this dominance was until the first rains. The redundancy analysis indicated that physical factors such as light availability and water level were the main factors driving the seasonal succession of phytoplankton. The composition of phytoplankton in spring was alternated by species of filamentous cyanobacteria in conditions of poor stability of the water column, such as Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii, and colonial species under conditions of high stability of the water column, such as Microcystis panniformis and Sphaerocavum brasiliensis. The extremes of torrential rains and severe droughts, governed by the hydrological regime of the semi-arid region led to the availability of resources in the watershed, directing the spatial and temporal dynamics of phytoplankton in the reservoir Cruzeta / As flora??es de cianobact?rias potencialmente t?xicas est?o disseminadas em corpos aqu?ticos por todo o globo, resultando na perda da qualidade da ?gua e efeitos negativos para a sa?de humana. Em regi?es ?ridas e semi?ridas, o regime hidrol?gico, caracterizado por um ciclo anual de seca e chuva, altera o volume e o tempo de reten??o dos reservat?rios. Tais altera??es afetam as caracter?sticas limnol?gicas e, consequentemente, ocassiona mudan?as na composi??o e biomassa da comunidade de cianobact?rias. O reservat?rio Cruzeta (Zmax = 8,7 m) ? um manancial de abastecimento eutr?fico, localizado no semi?rido tropical (Nordeste, Brasil). Levantou-se a hip?tese de que o regime hidrol?gico do semi?rido tropical ? um fator determinante na disponibilidade de recursos em mananciais eutrofizados, o que influencia na composi??o e domin?ncia de esp?cies de cianobact?rias. O objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar as mudan?as na biomassa e na composi??o de esp?cies de cianobact?rias durante dois ciclos hidrol?gicos anuais e avaliar fatores direcionadores. O estudo foi dividido em 5 per?odos distintos (seca 2010, chuva 2011, seca 2011, chuva 2012, seca 2012). O grupo dominante encontrado em todos os per?odos foi de Cianobact?rias (99% da biomassa total), o que contribuiu para a baixa diversidade. A esp?cie filamentosa Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii esteve presente em ambos os pontos em quase todo o estudo. As esp?cies coloniais Microcystis panniformis e Sphaerocavum brasiliensis dominaram somente nos per?odos com menores volumes de ?gua. As diatom?ceas contribu?ram mais com a biomassa durante o per?odo de seca severa. O ponto pr?ximo a barragem (P1) apresentou biomassa fitoplant?nica maior que o ponto pr?ximo ao tribut?rio (P2). A domin?ncia das esp?cies coloniais de cianobact?rias se estendeu at? o extravazamento do reservat?rio no P1. No P2, esta domin?ncia ocorreu at? as primeiras chuvas. A an?lise de redund?ncia indicou que vari?veis f?sicas, tais como disponibilidade de luz e o volume de ?gua, foram os principais fatores de condu??o da sucess?o sazonal do fitopl?ncton. A composi??o do fitopl?ncton no manancial foi alternada por esp?cies de cianobact?rias filamentosas nas condi??es de pouca estabilidade da coluna d??gua, como a Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii, e por esp?cies coloniais nas condi??es de elevada estabilidade da coluna d??gua, como Microcystis panniformis e Sphaerocavum brasiliensis. Os eventos extremos de chuvas torrenciais e secas severas, regidos pelo regime hidrol?gico da regi?o do semi?rido determinaram a disponibilidade de recursos no manancial, direcionando a din?mica temporal e espacial do fitopl?ncton no reservat?rio Cruzeta

Freshwater resources and supplies in South Africa are experiencing severe stress from rising population growth, drought and high urbanization. The stress factors have also exerted pressure on wastewater treatment works leading to the release of partially treated effluent. The study assessed and compared the impact of the two wastewater treatment works effluent discharged into the Roodeplaat Dam. Selected physical parameters (pH, conductivity), chemical parameters (total oxidised nitrogen, phosphate, chemical oxygen demand, chloride, sulphate, sodium) and microbiological parameter (Escherichia coli) were evaluated and compared with South African standards. Secondary data (from January 2012 to December 2017) was used to identify parameters that were above or below regulatory standards. The t-test (p < 0.05) was used to compare changes between 2012 and 2018 over the same months.The results indicated that aquatic ecosystem quality has not improved, degradation continues as well as a lack of intervention from authorities. The leading parameters in causing stress to Roodeplaat water quality in descending order were Escherichia coli (E. coli), Phosphate (PO43-), Total Oxidized Nitrogen (TON), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Chlorophyll a (Chl a), Ammonia (NH3), Electrical Conductivity (EC) and Sodium (Na). One of the main reasons why poor effluent was released is limited financial investment to upgrade the treatment facilities. This research provided highlights on the need to enforce extra measures to guarantee compliance of treated effluent quality to the existing guidelines. Moreover it highlights the need for concerned department’s authorities to invest in water by allocating enough budget to address the challenge of wastewater treatment works upgrades. / Environmental Sciences / M. Sc. (Environmental Sciences)