Toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory (public domain)
Toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory (public domain)

Lake slime getting worse globally since the '80s

Embargoed until: Publicly released:

New Zealand isn't the only one suffering from toxic algal blooms in our freshwater, as US researchers found algal blooms in large lakes have been on the rise globally in the past three decades. Using satellite data to monitor surface algal blooms on 71 lakes in 33 countries, they found blooms were more frequent in 70 per cent of the lakes they studied. Strangely, this increase in blooms changes couldn't be linked to usual causes of algal blooms like changes in rainfall or fertiliser but the few lakes that had  blooms drop over time warmed less compared to other lakes.

Journal/conference: Nature

Link to research (DOI): 10.1038/s41586-019-1648-7

Organisation/s: Stanford University, USA

Attachments:

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public

  • Springer Nature
    Web page
    The URL will go live after the embargo ends

News for:

International

Media contact details for this story are only visible to registered journalists.