Nowcasting of harmful algal blooms is important both for the public and for environmental management purposes. In the Baltic Sea, summer blooms of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, are regular phenomena but the past years intense and widespread blooms have caused major environmental concern due to its nuisance, increased nitrogen input and toxicity. One of the most abundant species Nodularia sp. c...

Developing an effective and rapid method to identify and estimate the abundance of Microcystis is warranted in the San Francisco Estuary (SFE) in view of expanding cyanobacterial blooms dominated by Microcystis spp. Blooms that occurred in the estuary from July to September 2007 were initially assessed using a standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) employing primers designed for the conserved...

Lake restoration practices based on reducing fish predation and promoting the dominance of large-bodied Daphnia grazers (i.e., biomanipulation) have been the focus of much debate due to inconsistent success in suppressing harmful cyanobacterial blooms. While most studies have explored effects of large-bodied Daphnia on cyanobacterial growth at the community level and/or on few dominant species,...

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are of increasing global concern and their prediction and management requires an improved understanding of the controlling factors for cyanobacterial growth and dominance. In Lake St Charles, the drinking water supply for Quebec City, Canada, harmful cyanobacterial blooms were first recorded in autumn 2006. Our aims were to define the temporal and spatial variation...

Three enclosures (10 x 10 x 1.5-1.3 m in depth) were set beside Dianch Lake, Kunming, People's Republic of China, for the period from July 28 to August 26, 2002. The enclosures were filled with cyanobacterial (Microcystis aeruginosa) water bloom-containing lake water. Lake sediment that contained macrophytes and water chestnut seeds was spread over the entire bottom of each enclosure. Initially...

We evaluated the presence of cyanobacterial blooms in San Roque Reservoir (Córdoba, Argentina). Cyanobacterial blooms and water samples were collected over 4 years (1998-2002). We confirmed the presence of microcystin-LR and microcystin-RR in 97% of these blooms. The total amount of microcystin (MC) ranged between 5.8 and 2400.0 microg x g(-1) of freeze-dried bloom material. These values sugges...

UNLABELLED Copper sulfate (CuSO4) has been widely used as an algicide to control harmful cyanobacterial blooms (CyanoHABs) in freshwater lakes. However, there are increasing concerns about this application, due mainly to the general toxicity of CuSO4 to other aquatic species and its long-term persistence in the environment. This study reported the isolation and characterization of two natural a...

Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous microorganisms considered as important contributors to the formation of Earth's atmosphere and nitrogen fixation. However, they are also frequently associated with toxic blooms. Indeed, the wide range of hepatotoxins, neurotoxins and dermatotoxins synthesized by these bacteria is a growing environmental and public health concern. This paper provides a state of the a...

Toxin producing cyanobacterial blooms have increased globally in recent decades in both frequency and intensity. Despite the recognition of this growing risk, the extent and magnitude of cyanobacterial blooms and cyanotoxin prevalence is poorly characterized in the heavily populated region of southern California. Recent assessments of lentic waterbodies (depressional wetlands, lakes, reservoirs...

The biological activity of cyanobacteria and their chemical components have been widely studied due to their blooms in eutrophic waters worldwide. The primary goal of this study was to determine if individual cyanobacterial species and mixtures of cyanobacteria collected from the environment contain compounds with the potential for interaction with signaling pathways of the aryl hydrocarbon rec...