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🏆 VICTORY in Mississippi! The SPLC won its challenge against the Mississippi Supreme Court's redistricting map.

This victory is a great leap forward for protecting the most fundamental right in this nation, voting.

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The members of the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s affiliated unions are inviting you to join us at the Labor Pavilion at the 2025 Minnesota State Fair! Stop by to learn about the work union members do across the state and why “It’s Better in a Union.” We’ll have giveaways all day and live music every...

08/13/2025

Why are toxic algae blooming in Northern Minnesota’s most pristine lakes?

The Science Museum of Minnesota aims to answer that question over the next three years as it researches the causes.

The Legislature awarded $1.3M to study blooms in lakes in the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters. They are in protected areas where toxic algae are not expected, said Lienne Sethna, principal investigator. The museum's research station specializes in paleolimnology, or the study of lake mud.

“You expect that these toxin-producing cyanobacterial blooms occur in more impacted lakes, like urban lakes or agricultural systems where you get a lot of farm runoff and fertilizer,” Sethna said.

Cyanobacteria — a species of bacteria that functions like algae — are part of these blooms that produce toxins, making the water unsafe to drink or swim in. Evolutionary advantages allow them to thrive in less sunlight and outcompete beneficial algae for nutrients.

The research started 3 years ago with the idea that dust from as far away as the Dakotas increased nutrients and caused blooms. They deployed buoys to monitor the lake temperature to research this hypothesis.

The data showed lakes with toxic blooms switched between stratified and unstratified. A lake is stratified when the water is warmer at the top and colder at the bottom, and it is unstratified when the water is the same temperature.

When stratified, the bottom layer has little to no oxygen, causing sediments to release phosphorus. When it stays that way, the phosphorus does not move past the higher oxygenated layers.

“But when you have mixing, that phosphorus that’s in the bottom waters is distributed through the water columns, and you get blooms,” Sethna said. The research station calls this process anoximixus.

The next phase will include collecting samples of lake mud to analyze and deploying more buoys.

The project aims to develop a profile of lakes susceptible to anoximixus and more vulnerable to toxic blooms, so agencies can notify the public when they're unsafe. The project’s ultimate goal is to inform strategies to manage and limit the growth of these blooms.

Read and listen here: tinyurl.com/toxicalgaemnlakes

🎙️📝 Dani Fraher