2022 Weekly Cyanobacteria Emails to the Community

Thank you for signing up to receive the Lake Champlain Committee (LCC) Cyanobacteria monitoring reports! Monitoring began the week of June 19 and will run through early fall. Each week we’ll send you an update about conditions monitors are finding around Lake Champlain and several inland lakes. Your weekly emails will usually be sent on a Friday or Monday of the following week but your next email will come out on Tuesday, July 5. This week’s report covers conditions from Sunday, June 19 through Saturday, June 25, 2022. Clear water dominated on the cyanobacteria tracker for Lake Champlain for the first week of monitoring during the 2022 season but several inland waterways experienced blooms.  

We received mainly good water quality reports during the second week of the cyanobacteria monitoring program. Scroll through this email for details of Week 2 2022 monitoring results from 6/26/22 through 7/2/22; photos of clean water conditions at Lake Champlain’s Button Bay, Oakledge Park, North Beach, and Valcour Island; check out a cool monitor innovation for water sampling without getting wet; and learn about the ingredients for a bloom.
 

Another week of mainly good water conditions reported by over 100 monitors from Lake Champlain and inland lake locations. Blooms showed up in Lake Champlain’s Mallett’s Bay, North Lake, and Missisquoi Bay and on Lake Carmi and Lake Memphremagog. Read on for details of Week 3 2022 monitoring results from 7/3/22 through 7/9/22; to learn about the colors of blooms and how to distinguish duckweed from cyanobacteria; and to see bloom close-ups, and clear water at Valcour Island, Camp Kiniya, and around Lake Champlain.

Our week 4 cyanobacteria monitoring report for July 10 through July 16 was delayed due to a breakdown with the cyanobacteria tracker. Monitors filed 187 reports during a busy week with blooms showing up in Lake Champlain’s Inland Sea, Main Lake North, Main Lake Central, and Main Lake South and at Lake Carmi and Lake Memphremagog while all other inland waterways reported good conditions. Please scroll through this email for Week 4 Monitoring Results for 7/10 – 7/16/22, and visuals of where cyanobacteria exist, bottled blooms, Lake Carmi cyanobacteria close-ups, and clear water at Valcour Island and Spring Lake.  

Most of the week was sunny, hot, calm, and humid and blooms took off in many Lake Champlain locations as well as at Lake Carmi. Heat waves are known to promote cyanobacteria blooms in waterways by increasing thermal stratification, allowing cyanobacteria to remain in warm and well-lit surface waters, and encouraging release of phosphorus from lake sediments in shallow lakes.

Conditions at Lake Champlain and inland Vermont waterways were overall much improved from the previous week. Continued warm weather along with the influx of nutrients from periodic storms could trigger additional cyanobacteria blooms so check the water carefully during your recreational outings and take advantage of the resources and links in this email to learn more about cyanobacteria. 

Bloom reports for the week were restricted to the Central Main Lake, St. Albans Bay, and Missisquoi Bay on Lake Champlain and to Knapp Pond and Lake Carmi for Vermont inland lakes. 

Scroll through this email to see what influences the color variance of blooms, and view pictures of the turquoise splotches of cyanobacteria in Knapp Pond in Cavendish VT, a bubbling brew of a bloom on the Winooski River’s Derway Cove inlet, and blooms that swirled around Lake Champlain’s St. Albans Bay Park for much of the week.

Happily, Central Main Lake was bloom-free during week 8 of monitoring but blooms persisted in sections of St. Albans Bay and Missisquoi Bay on Lake Champlain and Lake Carmi. After a week of bloom-free reports, cyanobacteria was observed again on Lake Memphremagog.  

We’ve had a lot of additional subscribers to our weekly cyanobacteria emails so here’s a link to all the weekly reports from the 2022 season in case you’ve missed any of them. They’re worth checking out for the compilation of reporting results, visuals of blooms, and information to help you differentiate cyanobacteria from other lake phenomena.

Happy end of August! As we move towards September, please remember that blooms can still happen as summer wanes which is why we are only about half way through the monitoring season. Blooms have been witnessed through November in our region during past years and the next few months can be very active periods for blooms. As the mixed surface layer gets deeper, more nutrients may move to the surface and fuel cyanobacteria growth. 

Several monitors reported odd gelatinous globules in the water at several sites in Lake Champlain’s Inland Sea during week 11 of monitoring. Happily they took water samples and photographs and shared the details with us and our partner Dr. Ana Morales-Williams at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory. The samples turned out to be Calothrix sp. – a benthic filamentous cyanobacteria.

Blooms continued into Week 12 of the monitoring season. You can see visuals of some of them from Lake Memphremagog, Lake Morey, Tinmouth Pond, Shelburne Pond and Lake Champlain’s Arnold Bay and Valcour Island, and Lake Champlain’s Keeler Bay. You’ll also find photos illustrating blue-green blues and the recreational impact of cyanobacteria. Click here to access monitor reports and photos from earlier in the season. 

While the weather cooled during Week 13 of monitoring, blooms continued in several lakes or bays where they were present previously and showed up in some new locations. On Lake Champlain, high alert conditions were restricted to nutrient-rich St. Albans Bay but there were low alerts in the Inland Sea, Malletts Bay, Main Lake North, and Main Lake South. Blooms also persisted in Lake Carmi, Lake Morey, and Lake Memphremagog. 

Week 14 of monitoring brought cooler weather, fewer sightings of cyanobacteria, but also far fewer monitors to report them. High alert blooms continued in parts of St. Albans Bay, Lake Carmi, and Lake Morey which have all had persistent blooms during the last weeks or months.

Good water conditions dominated monitoring reports during week 15 but blooms showed up in a few Lake Champlain locations as well as several inland lakes. Scroll down to see clear water at Alburgh Dunes State Park, and Graveyard Point on Lake Champlain; blooms at Lake Carmi, Lake Memphremagog, Shelburne Pond, Burlington beaches, and St. Albans Bay; and learn how to differentiate cyanobacteria from duckweed.

Good water conditions dominated monitoring reports for the second week in a row since we moved into the fall season but cyanobacteria blooms continued to show their colors in areas of Lake Champlain and several inland lakes.

Good water conditions dominated monitoring reports for the third full week of fall but there are far fewer monitors reporting this time of year on Lake Champlain and inland lakes. This week’s photos don’t show any cyanobacteria but scroll down to see what monitors observed during week 17 including...

Only a scattering of monitoring reports are still coming in as we move into stick season but all that do provide important data on water conditions. Lake Champlain was bloom-free for the second fall week in a row. Lake Champlain was bloom-free again for the fourth week in a row. The lone sighting of cyanobacteria came from Lake Iroquois but we only had reports from four inland lakes.Click here for further details of Week 18 – October 16 thru 22, 2022 water conditions.

Site coverage is scant this time of year but all 47 reports from Lake Champlain received during week 19 were of good conditions. For inland lakes, Lake Carmi had a low alert bloom and Joe’s Pond had a high alert. The latter covered a wide swath of shoreline but was short-lived. Blooms can still happen late in the season so please use the resources in this email to learn how to identify cyanobacteria. 

The 2022 cyanobacteria monitoring season has come to a close for LCC monitors and partners. Monitors collectively filed over 2,500 reports during this year’s 20-week season. In the links and photographs below you’ll find our last weekly report compilation for 2022; a link to sign-up to monitor in 2023; clear water scenes from Alburgh Dunes State Park, Stoney Point, and the Burlington shoreline; water samples from Burlington beaches and DAR State Park; stick season images; bike ride beauty; and which monitor filed 143 reports this season.