This column is all about you… and your water… your reservoir, lake, pond, lagoon, or whatever the nature of your water impoundment. Every water impoundment is it’s own ecosystem and like it or not they are “Algae Incubators”. By definition, an ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals, microbes, algae, cyanobacteria, etc.) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (air, water, minerals), interacting as a system. Understanding the ecology of a water body starts with the watershed or perhaps the entire river basin if the reservoir pulls water directly from a river or is a “run of the river” lake.
Whether you are a municipal source water or wastewater manager, a federal, state, county, private homeowner or recreational lake manager, you need to have a scheduled monitoring program with samples taken throughout the water column and strategically placed within the water and the watershed.
Lake ecosystems are dynamic living systems, changing continuously, night and day. The ancient Chinese proverb, “No man crosses the same stream twice” aptly describes our constantly changing water quality concerns from point and nonpoint pollution sources.
You may find this blog casually written but we are dead serious. This blog will focus on problems and solutions concerning the management and mitigation of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). We are all about Understanding and Problem Solving. We are specialists in managing and mitigating cyanoHABs. If you’re not monitoring, you’re not managing.
“If you have remarked errors in me, your superior wisdom must pardon them. Who errs not while perambulating the domain of nature? Who can observe everything with accuracy? Correct me as friend, and I as a friend will requite with kindness.” — Linnaeus