Cyanobacteria are a type of bacteria that can be found in almost every land and water environment, including oceans, lakes, and soils, and they are known to form extensive blooms in both freshwater and saltwater environments. Cyanobacteria are a growing concern for drinking water utilities, so understanding why cyanobacteria form blooms is a major focus of lake and ecological research. These blooms are termed harmful algal blooms (HABs), and in many cases, the prediction of HABs is not possible because of the unavailability of good data sets. Involving a large number of citizens in scientific data collection has the potential to help address this problem. In this project, a citizen science-based water quality program is being developed with Utah Lake, Utah as a model water body. The specific objectives of this citizen science project are to select and train citizen scientists in water quality data monitoring, to engage trained citizens in water quality data collection, to gather and validate the data collected by citizen scientists, and finally to develop a plan for a long term and sustainable citizen science-based water quality monitoring program.
In this research project, a citizen science-based water quality monitoring program is being established to increase public participation in decision making and to enable sustainable management of surface water quality. The scientific hypotheses are; (1) Utah Lake is phosphorus limited and the magnitude of internal and external phosphorus loads are similar over space and time, (2) genetic tools based on DNA sequencing of environmental samples can provide an improved resolution of cyanobacterial ecology (including novel species) in the lake under different environmental factors and elucidate the active role of other flanking bacterial communities during HABs events, and (3) participatory education and outreach approaches can be used to develop management strategies that are embraced by stakeholders throughout the watershed and thus implemented on a broader basis. The most significant broader impact of this research is the training and involvement of citizen scientists in water quality research that may aid regulatory decision making. Graduate and undergraduate students are also being trained in this project.
