Harmful algal blooms (HABs) impede ecosystem services and enhance ecosystem dis-services. Our study will elucidate links between HABs and human well-being, and investigate how and why a community takes action based on data about those links. The study has six objectives: (1) determine relationships between cyanobacteria blooms (CB) and nutritional value of fish; (2) understand the impact of aerosolized neurotoxins from CB on human health; (3) explore impacts of nonmaterial connections between CB and human well-being; (4) determine factors that have impeded water quality improvement; (5) evaluate the effectiveness of informational framings to motivate action to reduce HABs; and (6) develop nuanced understanding of how communities accept, process, and understand scientific information related to HABs, and how they feel empowered or disempowered to affect change.
Each component of our study employs an approach appropriate to its objective and the discipline(s) from which it draws. To test hypotheses about the links between HABs and multiple components of human well-being, we analyze the fatty acid and toxin content of fish, sample ambient aerosols within the community, and conduct an experiment to determine if visual exposure to HABs leads to increases in stress. To elucidate how a community responds to information about the impacts of HABs, we work with community partners to analyze historical media sources for factors influencing the failure of past initiatives to combat HABs, conduct an experimental survey that frames HAB impacts in multiple ways and observes motivations to take action, and conduct a community-based study of how people absorb, process, and (do not) act upon the increasing amount of HAB-related data with which they are presented.
Results/Conclusions
We report results from four components of this ongoing study. We find that fatty acid content is lower in fish tissue sampled during CB. We report preliminary results on neurotoxins found in aerosol samples (we will complete lab analysis in early summer). We present a timeline of historical media representation of ecological and social aspects of HABs and our analysis of what impedes community action toward water quality improvement. We present preliminary results of mental models interviews that characterize how community members understand HABs’ ecology. We also describe the use of EnviroAtlas outputs in our community engaged discussions of scientific information.
Ecologists and geologists provide increasingly unequivocal information about HABs and their deleterious impacts. This study may inform the ability of communities to draw on these data to effectively reduce HABs.