Dr. Weathers and colleagues from Dartmouth (K. Cottingham) and Bates Colleges (H. Ewing and M. Greer) and Virginia Tech University (C.Carey) are researching how recent, extensive blooms of the cyanobacterium gloeotrichia echinulata are either driving—or following—the "eutrophication train" in low-nutrient lakes across New England.
Collaborative research is underway to understand the causes and consequences of these recent "gloeo" blooms for lake plankton communities and ecosystem functioning; reconstruct past abundances using paleoecological records; and apply what is being learned from the team's long-term studies of this species to the general problem of cyanobacterial response to global climate change.
Ongoing field observations in Lake Sunapee, NH, are a key component of this project. To date, the research team has combined statistical analyses of these long-term data (e.g., Carey et al. 2014) with short-term field experiments and difference and differential equations models (e.g., Greer et al. 2013). (Source )