My Bantam Lake App

In 2018, White Memorial intern Cheyenne Liberti created "My Bantam Lake" app to highlight Bantam Lake and its watershed as the premiere recreation destination of northwest Connecticut. This webapp provides the same information that "Bantam Lake Cyanos" did, but adds some multidimensional topics that should be of interest to the stakeholders of Bantam Lake.

Current Cyanos forecast when this was
written. More information about how
the forecast was developed, and what is
meant by "Caution" for lake users

Home page of My Bantam Lake, a webapp that builds off of the
"Cyanos" website with added topics to help engage lake users
in all aspects of living with and near a lake

Main menu for
MyBantamLake.org

Users are first greeted with a montage of beautiful photos of Bantam Lake. From there, they can navigate to a main menu which has options to explore community happenings, wildlife field guides, tips for living on a lake, and many other informative pages. Of course, the first option on the menu is the Cyanobacteria forecast. The site is extremely user-friendly, and offers so much to explore. I encourage anyone reading this to check it out for themselves, as writing about it cannot do it justice! 

The lake is much more than just a body of water. It affects, and is affected by, everything around it for miles and miles. So, it is only fair that an app that is developed for and about the lake should involve all the different aspects of it. 

Some of the wildlife field guides available of the webapp

It is hoped that this website will grow into a mutually-benefiting tool between the people who manage the lake and people who are most affected when the lake is un-usable.

Users can easily upload photos and videos to the webapp

Lake managers will benefit from a more robust body of data that is uploaded by app users. Something as simple as uploading a photo of dead fish on your beach or green algae washing up on shore can be a huge help to lake managers, who cannot survey every inch of the lake every single day. Cooperation is key!

Stakeholders of the lake will benefit in a few different ways. Just like with "Cyanos", they will be able to view the cyanobacteria forecast which helps guide their decisions about interacting with the lake. On a more long-term scale, lake users will be rewarded for their citizen science efforts with a better-managed lake. One that may be less prone to severe algal blooms, and the issues that accompany them.

Everyone has a responsibility to care for the lake, and with the help of MyBantamLake.org, we can come together as a community to set achievable goals toward a healthier lake. 

Presenting Bantam Lake Cyanos at the Northeast Algal Society Symposium

James Fischer will be presenting the Bantam Lake Cyanos project at the 57th annual Northeast Algal Society Symposium.  Bantam Lake Cyanos is the wildly popular platform that Amanda Keilty developed to communicate weekly cyanobacteria assessment and strategies that people can use to make informed decisions regarding their recreational activities.  Bantam Lake Cyanos consisted of a website that communicates how people can make better decisions to reduce their impact on the lake ecosystem.  The smartphone app encouraged users to upload images of scums observed on the lake and facilitated a citizen science approach to help lake managers.  Bantam Lake Cyanos is a collaborative project with Bantam Lake Protective Association who contracted Northeast Aquatic Research to perform the weekly assessments and monitoring. 

The Northeast Algal Society Symposium is being held at the University of New Haven on April 13 - 15, 2018.  The theme for the symposium is "Broaden Your Impact" which will inspire a discussion of how to communicate research to a broader audience.  Several noteworthy environmental reporters have been invited to address the group.  More information about the symposium can be found here. 

CO-AUTHORS:

James Fischer, White Memorial Conservation Center

Amanda Keilty, Johnson State College

George Knoecklein, Northeast Aquatic Research

Constance Trolle, Bantam Lake Protective Association

TITLE:

Saving Lakes One App and Website at a Time

ABSTRACT:

Bantam Lake experiences cyanobacteria blooms annually, but the bloom of 2016 was unusually intense and sustained.  It ultimately resulted in beach closures and restricted lake usage when seasonal use was at its highest.  As a result, incidence/crisis communication to stakeholders became the primary job for the Bantam Lake Protective Association.  The BLPA decided that a proactive approach was necessary in 2017. They contracted Northeast Aquatic Research for weekly assessments of cyanobacteria activity (cell counts/ml) and other lake measurements to effectively manage the blooms. This data was also useful when informing stakeholders about the state of the lake. We developed Bantam Lake Cyanos as a communication portal that provides up-to-date forecasts of cyanobacteria activity and other lake measurements via a website and smartphone app. The website also informs visitors of the health risks associated with blooms and the daily decisions they could make to reduce nutrient run-off, which aids in the bloom growth and formation. App users shared images of blooms, thereby turning them into citizen scientists and alerting lake managers of changes to the lake. We will review usage statistics for these communication portals that indicates their relevance to stakeholders.

Announcing New Bantam Lake Cyanos Website and App

We are pleased to announce a new project for White Memorial's Research and Conservation Programs.  Bantam Lake Cyanos is a new website developed to inform stakeholders about cyanobacteria current activity and the health risks associated with cyanobacteria blooms.  Stakeholders can learn about conservation measures that they can do to reduce their influence which drive cyanos activity.  A smartphone app was developed for Android and iOS.  The app makes it easier for the user to access the cyanobacteria forecast and to encourage users to upload images of cyanobacteria blooms on Bantam Lake.  These images will improve the accuracy of the cyanobacteria forecasts.

The website and app was created by Amanda Keilty, a Bachelor of Science candidate at Johnson State College, Johnson, VT.  Before Amanda's internship at White Memorial, she performed research in Lake Champlain studying how nutrient loading influenced E. coli and harmful algal blooms.

Testing Bantam Lake for potentially harmful cyanobacteria

A cyanobacteria, phormidium (cluster of rods, center), and a zooplankton, Bosmina longirostris (bottom)

     With help from the Northeast Cyanobacteria Monitoring Program, we are reviewing the species composition of the "blue-green algae" in Bantam Lake and other water bodies on the property.  We frequently use the University of New Hampshire's Center for Freshwater Biology for identifying the so-called "Dirty Dozen" species of cyanobacteria, as well as phytoplankton and zooplankton.  Our observations are reported to the Cyanoscope iNaturalist.
     Cyanobacteria are naturally occurring photosynthetic organisms that live within the top ten feet of surface water.  While these organisms are usually harmless and nearly omnipresent, high concentrations of them known as blooms concentrate the toxins they releases.  When this happens, they can cause harm to fish, aquatic plants, and amphibians, as well as terrestrial animals who swim or drink water in which there's been a bloom.  Blooms can be caused by a shift in the nutrient levels in water, like an increase in nitrogen caused by fertilizer runoff.  Blooms usually occur in warm weather.
      The Dirty Dozen are the twelve most commonly observed species of cyanobacteria in New England.  We've sampled water from Beaver Pond, Bantam River, and Litchfield Town Beach, and will sample from several other locations on Bantam Lake.  So far, we've found nine of the twelve.  They are not present in large enough quantities to be harmful, and some, like phormidium, can be indicators of clean water when in normal quantities.  By sampling at Bantam Lake, we are hoping to better understand the community of cyanobacteria present in the lake.  Shifts in the species present could tell us more about water quality and hopefully warn us before a bloom occurs.