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MSU's Hancock Biological Station Receives $3.8M Grant to Study Toxic Algae Blooms

Murray State University

A field research station on Kentucky Lake has received a $3.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation that will fund the study of toxic algae blooms.

Murray State University’s Hancock Biological Station is partnering with faculty from the University of Kentucky and Marshall University on the four-year grant, which has an overall aim of developing scientific resources to improve water quality.

Hancock Biological Station director Dr. David White says part of the money will go toward new technology that can help monitor the blue-green algal blooms, which can cause illness to swimmers or people who consume contaminated water.

“The idea is to look at these blooms based on using environmental sensors," White said. "So we would actually put things out in the river that could measure the conditions that might indicate that a bloom is going to occur.”

White says the new sensors will be placed in the Ohio River, as well as smaller streams throughout Kentucky. The data generated from them will be publicly available in real time on the Internet. 

White said the money will also be used to bring in graduate students and early career faculty to help address the problem.

“We just don’t have the scientists or resources in either Kentucky or West Virginia to do this,” White said. “This will also potentially help state and other organizations, like ORSANCO, in producing a monitoring program for their own.”

As the harmful algal blooms have become more of a problem in the last few years, efforts to track them have included using satellite imagery.

The Hancock Biological Station, located on the western shore of Kentucky Lake, is in its 50th year of operation.

John Null is the host and creator of Left of the Dial. From 2013-2016, he also served as a reporter in the WKMS newsroom.
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