A professor for Cornell University who studies the water of Oneida Lake says algae blooms are a regular part of summer, but this year he’s seeing more of them.
He’s not alone: the New York Department of Environmental Conservation reports several algae blooms have been spotted in Oneida Lake.
“This is blue-green blooms. It’s probably a species called Anabaena and you can see that bluish color,” says professor Lars Rudstam from Cornell. As the director of a field office for the university he spends a lot of his summer studying algae blooms. “(It) usually comes on in the late summer – Middle summer, late summer,” says Rustam. “It’s due to higher temperature. It’s due to nutrient input in the lake.”
Professor Rudstam says you can find algae blooms in most lakes across the state. The blooms need specific conditions to grow, and as you’d expect water is one of them. Rudstam says because of the high amount of rain this season we’re seeing more blooms than in years past.
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