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A view of the Rocky Mountains from Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Even the Rockies aren't immune to algae problems

THE BLADE/TOM HENRY

Even the Rockies aren't immune to algae problems

ESTES, Colo. — High up in the Rocky Mountains, there’s a growing environmental problem that has something in common with western Lake Erie.

Believe it or not, it’s algae.

The Rocky Mountains may seem like one of the more unlikely places to find algal blooms, but a scientist who spoke to journalists on Thursday during a tour of Rocky Mountain National Park said algal blooms are not only there but on the rise. The tour was one of several offered during the 2019 national Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Fort Collins, Colo., which ended Sunday.

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“What we are seeing is an incredible increase in green algae in alpine lakes,” Jill Baron, a senior U.S. Geological Survey scientist and senior research ecologist at Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, said.

The shoreline along western Lake Erie's Maumee Bay, across Bay Shore Road from the University of Toledo's Lake Erie Center, was thick with algae.
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Her research focus includes algae inside Rocky Mountain National Park. She said she found some algae up there as recently as a week ago.

She agrees the presence of algal blooms at such high altitudes — and in an area so heavily protected as a national park — speaks to the phenomenon scientists globally have been warning the public about in recent years: algae is becoming ubiquitous, fouling water supplies all over the world at a time Earth’s population is growing and demand for freshwater is becoming more intense.

Algae in Rocky Mountain bodies of water also defies conventional thinking because they often have colder temperatures and are dozens of miles from nutrient sources such as farms and big-city wastewater treatment plants.

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But scientists said it appears effects of climate change are exacerbating what had been a little-known problem. There are now more warmer days in the Rockies and there is more solar energy penetrating lakes up there.

There’s something about the additional solar energy that’s helping blooms grow up in the mountains, Brad Udall, a Colorado State University senior scientist/scholar, said during a special Climate Matters workshop which preceded the SEJ conference.

Equally as important is the atmospheric fallout of a common algae nutrient, nitrogen.

The main source appears to be nitrous oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants miles away. It converts to nitrogen in the atmosphere and helps algae grow when it settles on lakes and streams, Ms. Baron said.

Mandy Gunasekara, left, Joe Pinion, and Guido Girgenti were among four speakers at a keynote luncheon hosted by the national Society of Environmental Journalists at its annual conference, held earlier this month in Fort Collins, Colo.
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“We, as humans, tend to focus on one problem at a time,” Ms. Baron told The Blade. “You cannot dismiss atmospheric deposition. Climate change is certainly an impact, too.”

It’s long been known that blue-green harmful algal blooms, better known as HABs or cyanobacteria, have been found in Asia, Africa, Australia, and other parts of the world, including South Florida and the Pacific Northwest.

Since Toledo’s 2014 water crisis, scientists have been amplifying the point that algae is not just a Lake Erie thing.

But what’s up in the Rocky Mountains is a different type of algae than the microcystis and planktothrix that dominate western Lake Erie’s open water and the lake’s Sandusky Bay each summer, respectively.

The dominant species inside Rocky Mountain National Park is called zygnema. It comes in at least 100 forms and is one of about 7,000 species of what are commonly called green algae.

According to a Colorado State University release, Ms. Baron’s research includes that at Sky Pond, an alpine lake that’s 11,000 feet above sea level and within Rocky Mountain National Park.

“Even though Sky Pond has its own quiet-living algal communities, the presence of bloom-forming algae is a strange new occurrence,” the statement reads.

Ms. Baron told The Blade there’s been evidence of algae in Rocky Mountain National Park since the 1950s, but that it’s been growing rapidly since 2000.

Nine of the 10 hottest years since climate record-keeping began in the 1800s have been since 2000, which many scientists have said is consistent with climate change.

First Published October 14, 2019, 11:00 a.m.

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A view of the Rocky Mountains from Rocky Mountain National Park.  (THE BLADE/TOM HENRY)  Buy Image
Jill Baron, senior U.S. scientist and Colorado State University senior research engineer, speaks to journalists about algae in Rocky Mountain National Park alpine lakes.  (THE BLADE/TOM HENRY)  Buy Image
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