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.
   

Ben Vermilyea Wins First Place Scholarship for His Project Titled "Do Invasives Earthworms Impact Water Quality?"

I am pleased to announce that Ben Vermilyea received the first place scholarship from the Natural Resources Conservation Academy for his project titled "Do Invasives Earthworms Impact Water Quality?"  Ben was awarded scholarship yesterday (March 15, 2016) at the Connecticut Conference on Natural Resources at the Unversity of Connecticut.

Congratulations Ben on a job well done!

Do Invasive Earthworms Impact Water Quality?

Ben Vermilyea attended the Natural Resource Conservation Academy (NRCA) at UCONN this past summer 2015.  He approached White Memorial seeking a community partner so that he could apply what he learned at the NRCA.  I have been interested to explore if exotic earthworms could increase soil erosion near headwater streams thereby impacting water quality when they incorporate the mineral layers and consuming leaf litter on the surface.  We've observed leaf litter loss in some areas on the property so severe that by the end of the summer the soils are nearly completely denuded of leaf litter before the next leaf litter crop.  This exposes the soil the air and encourages soil erosion either by the falling water droplets hitting the soil or by sheeting.  Ben and I developed a novel method for measuring soil erosion.  We installed fabric hammocks along the stream bank that collected soil particles before they entered a stream that flowed near an earthworm invaded area and compared that data with another stream that was not impacted by earthworms.  We observed some important patterns.  The earthworms indeed changed the soil properties.  Although we did not observe significant differences between the weights of the soil particles entering both streams, we performed a power analysis which suggested a significant difference could be detected if we increased our sample size to a total of 451 hammocks samples.  We feel this it is feasible to acheive this in future research, so stay tuned.  Obviously, this is based on certain assumptions but we may not need to as many samples if we were to compare headwater streams that flow through regions that are more severely impacted by exotic earthworms.

Ben will present the poster (above) at the Connecticut Conference on Natural Resources on March 14, 2016 at UCONN.

Congratulations Ben!