Alternative alert system for cyanobacterial bloom, using phycocyanin as a level determinant.

Chlorophyll a concentration and cyanobacterial cell density are regularly employed as dual criteria for determinations of the alert level for cyanobacterial bloom. However, chlorophyll a is not confined only to the cyanobacteria, but is found universally in eukaryotic algae. Furthermore, the determination of cyanobacterial cell counts is notoriously difficult, and is unduly dependent on individual variation and trained skill. A cyanobacteria-specific parameter other than the cell count or chlorophyll a concentration is, accordingly, required in order to improve the present cyanobacterial bloom alert system. Phycocyanin has been shown to exhibit a strong correlation with a variety of bloom-related factors. This may allow for the current alert system criteria to be replaced by a three-stage alert system based on phycocyanin concentrations of 0.1, 30, and 700 microg/L. This would also be advantageous in that it would become far more simple to conduct measurements without the need for expensive equipment, thereby enabling the monitoring of entire lakes more precisely and frequently. Thus, an alert system with superior predictive ability based on high-throughput phycocyanin measurements appears feasible.