Issue of cyanobacteria blooms in Taihu Lake, China

Abstract

Taihu Lake is an important lake located in the eastern China. As a eutrophic lake, lake-wide cyanobacteria blooms have occurred annually, damaging its natural functions and threatened the safety of drinking water resources. This paper first described the harms of cyanobacteria blooms in Taihu Lake, which are mainly manifested in effect to aquatic organisms, damage on the ecological landscape and threats to human health. The northern and western parts of lake were the most frequent area were cyanobacteria blooms occur, usually between middle June to middle October. The dominant algae during the cyanobacteria blooms were Microcystis whose abundance had correlations with water quality (i.e., pH, dissolved oxygen, permanganate index, total nitrogen and phosphorus, etc.) and bacteria quantity. Many factors impact the cyanobacteria blooms including physical, chemical and biological factors, of which high temperature (>28 °C) and nutrients loads contributed most for the cyanobacteria blooms. Further the integrated physical (dredging sediments) and ecological methods (phytoremediation) should be utilized to control the cyanobacteria blooms in Taihu Lake.