Cleaning up Cape Cod
Professor Daniel Rogers, along with Stonehill students, is working to combat the threat of toxic algae toward lakes, ponds and rivers on Cape Cod.
With lake, ponds and rivers on Cape Cod being threatened by toxic algal blooms, which can disrupt ecosystems and endanger people and pets if consumed or touched, we asked Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniel Rogers, a Cape resident and a chemical oceanographer, who studies nutrient cycling in coastal waters, for insight on the scale of the problem and why it is happening.
How big is this challenge?
The Cape is not alone in being impacted by toxic algae blooms, which are affecting local ponds, lakes and coastal waters around the country. In 2019, for example, Lake Erie had a 300-700 square mile bloom, which is huge.
What is happening?
As a result of changing environmental conditions, we are seeing the lowering of water quality, meaning an increase in nutrients and decrease in available oxygen, this process is called eutrophication. These added nutrients act like adding fertilizer to your garden. The nutrients stimulate the growth of the plants (cyanobacteria and algae).
Just as your garden attracts rabbits that eat your vegetables, the algal blooms are followed by more grazing organisms, consuming the plants but also the oxygen in the water. That loss of oxygen (called hypoxia and anoxia) drives the cascade of environmental effects: diminishing water quality, fish migration or fish kills.
Professor Rogers also works to develop oyster farming as a method of restoring health to the water off Cape Cod’s shores.
Where do the toxins come in?
Eutrophication can lead to algal blooms some of which produce toxins. Harmful algal blooms (HABs), like Red tides, are the blooming of specific phototrophic species that produce a toxin—some of these toxins are more powerful than cyanide.
What’s the knock-on impact?
This toxin can be magnified through the food chain. For example, shellfish may eat the HAB organisms, concentrating the toxin in the shellfish tissue. Humans may then consume the shellfish and react to the elevated toxin levels. Called paralytic shellfish poisoning, this can be fatal.
How does climate change affect these processes?
With global warming, the biology goes faster, some organisms can doubles every 30 minutes under ideal conditions. Cells breathe more rapidly consuming more oxygen and oxygen is also less available as water temperature increases. Just as your plants in the garden respond differently to summer’s heat (weeds bloom and flowers wilt) the increase in water temperatures may favor a different set of organisms, maybe the organisms that produce the HABs.
What about human activity?
Increasing nutrient levels, like climate change, may alter the composition of the bloom and is a result of human activity. As population densities increase all the nitrogen that we introduce into the environment moves into the water systems.
Look at where the major cities of the world are located. About half the world’s population lives within 60 miles of the coasts.
Stonehill Trustee Elizabeth Hayden '76
What kind of research are you involved with at Stonehill?
The Chemistry Department has received funding from trustee Elizabeth Hayden ‘76 to begin a project next summer called the Cape Cod Environmental Restoration Internship. In conjunction with the nonprofit, Friends of Bass River in Yarmouth, MA, two Stonehill student interns will collect samples and process data from the Bass River and conduct the science to ascertain if the health of the ecosystem is improved through the restoration efforts of the non-profit.
Will you be overseeing this research?
Not just overseeing but also working closely with our interns who receive hands-on training for both the science of their research as well as the public engagement and outreach aspects.
This public engagement piece is important for the next generation of scientists because historically scientists have failed at effectively communicating the scientific findings and reasoning behind scientifically based decisions. For example, look at the confusion and disparity in how localities responded to COVID-19 or how some members of the public interpret the word consensus regarding climate change.
At Stonehill since 2014, Professor Rogers, a faculty member in the Chemistry Department, serves within the Environmental Sciences and Studies Program. His teaching interests include analytical chemistry, instrumental analysis, environmental chemistry, biogeochemistry and microbiology.