NSF Abstract

Lakes worldwide are impacted by harmful algal blooms (HABs), also known as cyanoHABs. HABs can lower water quality and produce toxins, impairing fisheries, recreational waters, and drinking water sources. HABs are often related to nutrient pollution, but nutrient reductions from surrounding watersheds require collaboration, awareness, and community buy-in to make sustainable long-term changes and prevent bloom formation. This is particularly the case for areas that have limited access to drinking water infrastructure and where the impacts of HABs have been largely overlooked. In this project, community-based activities engage two rural communities in Western Oregon near Tenmile Lakes and Dorena Lake with respect to HABs awareness, risks, and vulnerabilities. The communities? economies are reliant on watershed resources, e.g., timber and agriculture, that may contribute to nutrient loading, and on resources provided by the impacted lake, such as fishing, drinking water, and irrigation water. In partnership with rural stakeholders, organizations, and community members, this project explores climate-smart, sustainable, value-added intervention strategies to prevent HABs and reduce health risks.

Collaborating with civic partners focused on environment and livelihood, our research addresses knowledge gaps regarding the health risks and economic impacts of cyanoHABs in rural regions. We work with local communities to address the loss of water security due to cyanoHABs and test the use of a carbon by-product technology, biochar, to mitigate impacts of cyanoHABs. Biochar is used in agriculture and forestry to improve soil and ecosystem health. Here we apply it in the context of watersheds and water treatment. Through roundtables, workshops, interviews, and pilot experiments, and in collaboration with civic partners, stakeholders, and impacted community members, our research assesses the efficacy, feasibility, and sustainability of local biochar (i) to enhance near shore buffer zones designed to mitigate nutrient loading and reduce frequency and severity of blooms and (ii) to remove cyanotoxins through gravity-fed filters. Our work informs mitigation and water treatment strategies in two rural communities and helps inform other projects in rural communities impacted by cyanoHABs globally.

This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program?s Track A. Climate and Environmental Instability - Building Resilient Communities through Co-Design, Adaption, and Mitigation and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Award Abstract #2431141