Ohio State researchers team up to fight algae blooms

Scientific research has always been more of an individual endeavor.  But during the past decade, research aimed at tackling real-world problems has become a team sport that pulls players from a spectrum of lab benches. At Ohio State University, one such interdisciplinary collaboration has spent five years trying to find a solution for the harmful algae blooms that annually plague lakes and rivers in the state’s western water basin. By uniting biologists with ecologists, political scientists and economists, the team did more than test a single hypothesis. Researchers pinpointed strategies for curbing toxic algae and also were able to demonstrate that Ohio farmers and taxpayers are willing to do their part. The project’s results were announced last week. It is one of many focused on toxic algae, a growing threat to Lake Erie’s $1.7 billion tourism industry and the ability to provide safe drinking water for 11 million people.  Earlier this year, the United States and Canada struck a binational agreement to cut phosphorus discharge into Lake Erie by 40 percent. So OSU researchers began by testing different paths to hitting that benchmark for reducing phosphorus, the nutrient that ultimately feeds massive blankets of toxic algae. Using watershed models, they narrowed the solutions to three farming practices: applying fertilizer below soil surface; making use of cover crops to reduce runoff; and planting buffer strips, stretches of noncrop plants that surround fields. Through extensive surveying, researchers discovered that 39 percent of farmers in the Lake Erie watershed already were using subsurface fertilization, 22 percent were growing cover crops and another 35 percent planted buffer strips. Still, each of those numbers falls at least 20 percent short of where it needs to be to hit that 40 percent reduction benchmark.