What Are Cyanobacteria?

Cyanobacteria, often referred to as "blue-green algae," are some of the oldest life forms on Earth, dating back over 3.5 billion years. These photosynthetic bacteria were instrumental in oxygenating the early atmosphere and making complex life possible. Today, they remain essential to global nutrient cycles and aquatic food webs.

Most cyanobacteria are harmless or even beneficial, but under the right environmental conditions, some can grow explosively and form dense harmful cyanobacterial blooms (HCBs). These blooms have emerged as a growing threat in lakes, ponds, and rivers across the world.

What Causes Harmful Blooms?

Harmful blooms are complex ecological phenomena but are strongly influenced by human activity and global change. Key contributing factors include:

• Excess nutrients from fertilizers, wastewater, and urban runoff (especially nitrogen and phosphorus)
• Rising temperatures due to climate change, which support faster cyanobacterial growth
• Low water movement from drought, damming, or shoreline development
• Ecological imbalance like loss of grazers or competition with other algae

Climate change acts as a major amplifier: warmer water temperatures extend the bloom season, alter rainfall patterns that affect nutrient runoff, and promote water column stratification, all of which enhance bloom risk and persistence.

Why Count Cyanobacteria?

Systematic monitoring helps scientists and the public:

• Track bloom formation, spread, and duration
• Identify toxic species early
• Inform water management decisions (closures, treatments, advisories)
• Advance research on bloom ecology and prevention

Impacts on Health and Ecosystems

Harmful blooms can produce dangerous cyanotoxins (like microcystin and anatoxin-a), posing serious risks to:

• People: through recreational exposure or drinking water contamination
• Animals: including pets and livestock that drink or swim in contaminated water
• Wildlife and aquatic ecosystems: due to oxygen depletion and food web disruption

Ecologically, blooms block sunlight, harm aquatic vegetation, cause mass die-offs, and degrade water quality for weeks or months. They’re not just a nuisance—they can render entire water bodies unusable.

Broader Monitoring Efforts

Many public agencies and academic researchers monitor harmful blooms, but resources are stretched. Examples include:

• CyAN Project (EPA/NOAA/USGS/NASA)
• Great Lakes HAB Early Warning System
• Secchi Dip-In Citizen Monitoring

What purpose does this site serve?

Plankton Watch is a community-powered tool for environmental monitoring. Traditional environmental monitoring is often limited by time, funding, and personnel, but harmful cyanobacterial blooms can change rapidly: they wont wait until a research team is available. By crowdsourcing observations through community science (also known as citizen science), every lake visitor, field researcher, boater, hiker, or concerned local becomes a potential data contributor. With this comes a whole host of benefis:

• Wider Coverage: Many eyes across many lakes offer more complete monitoring than any single agency could provide.
• Early Detection: Citizen reports can catch bloom events early, improving response time.
• Public Engagement: Participating increases awareness and fosters long-term care for freshwater ecosystems.
• Low Barrier to Entry: No lab coat required—anyone with access to a microscope or a camera can help.
• Educational Value: A rich opportunity for schools and volunteers to engage in real-world science.

Keep in mind: this platform was initially developed for use with the Lake Sunapee Protective Association, and as such, currently depends on users who can collect or access freshwater samples. This often means lake associations or academic institutions, but anyone ambitious enough is welcome to explore how to get started independently. However, the underlying framework was designed to be flexible to allow other communities to adopt its use. In time, the hope is to create resources to enable organizations to utilize this framework. If you’re interested but not already connected to an organization, consider reaching out to your local government, watershed group, or conservation agency to see if they might be interested in adopting a system like this.

What Happens Next?

After submitting observations, your data enters a shared database that can support scientific analysis, visualization, and response planning. If you're part of a partner organization, your data may feed into ongoing monitoring initiatives. If you're an independent contributor, you're still helping build an open, scalable system for freshwater health.

In short: Whether you upload one image or contribute all season, you’re part of a growing network of people working to protect our lakes.

Site Development & Feedback

Because I’m just a student, much of this site’s code is still a work in progress. I have plans to improve and streamline it over time, but if you’re faster than me, feel free to explore the project’s GitHub. If you encounter bugs or have feature suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out via email or submit an issue below.

Like the research itself, this site benefits from community input to function at its best. As time allows, I hope to add several new features, including:

• Resources and documentation for organizations looking to get involved
• A searchable database to help users find local lake associations or monitoring groups
• Offline functionality for contributors without stable internet access
• On-site tools for processing and analyzing data (coming very soon!)