Blue-Green Algae (BGA)
Cyanobacteria blooms along shorelines. Michael Knall. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Blue-green algae (BGA), also known as cyanobacteria, can range in colors from blues, greens, reds, and black. BGA can reduce nitrogen and carbon in water, but can also deplete dissolved oxygen when overabundant. Monitoring BGA is important because they pose a serious threat to water quality, ecosystem stability, surface drinking water supplies, and public health through toxin production and the large biomass produced in algal blooms.
Xylem YSI measures blue-green algae in real-time through the in vivo fluorometry technique. This method directly detects the fluorescence of a specific pigment in living algal cells and determines relative algal biomass. The BGA sensor does not receive interference from chlorophyll or turbidity.
