Buffalo River algae findings presented
FAYETTEVILLE — An employee of the U.S. Geological Survey gave an overview of the results from a five-year study of filmentous algae on Arkansas’ Buffalo River on the first day of the Arkansas Agriculture, Forests and Water Resources Conference in Fayetteville.
The data, which USGS’s Lucas Driver said was still preliminary since some data from the tail end of the study still hasn’t come back yet, showed that algal blooms during the summer growing season tended to cover 40% of the sites that the USGS surveyed along the river.
That means that for each segment that was part of the study, 40% of the water area of that segment had algae.
While most of the areas with the highest amount of algal blooms occurred in downstream segments of the river, there was one area just downstream of Margaret White Spring that had consistent algae blooms. Driver said that this is an indicator that nutrients from the groundwater in the area are “heavily influencing” the algae growth.
The Buffalo River can draw over a million visitors a year thanks to its recreational opportunities, but the state of Arkansas, according to Driver, doesn’t have criteria for water to be declared “impaired” for recreational uses due to algae. However, West Virginia does and the baseline that it uses is 40% coverage, which is what the USGS is seeing in the data it collected on the river, Driver said.
“That might ruffle some feathers” if similar impairment guidelines were adopted in Arkansas, Driver went on to add.
The Arkansas Agriculture, Forests and Water Resources Conference is a two and a half day conference gathering environmental regulators, researchers, and industry to discuss water issues facing the state of Arkansas.
Also on the first day, a cotton farmer discussed how he has reduced runoff from his farming operations through the use of “no till” and cover crops, while the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment’s Interim Chief Administrator of the Environment Bailey Taylor discussed land application permits and other modernization efforts prioritized by the department, such as digitizing the field logs used by farmers to demonstrate compliance with their land application permit conditions.