Mentor: Matthew Saxton, Ph.D.

Currently, there is a major issue in reservoirs and lakes everywhere with the frequency of algal blooms. Although our main study is determining how bacteria communities adapt to seasonal changes in the nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratio we are currently focused on how these nutrient shifts influence community composition across seasons. We hope that this will in turn help tackle our long-term goal of reducing the severity and frequency of algal blooms and improve water quality. We started by analyzing water samples from Acton Lake that were collected over the span of a year. After processing this data in RStudio we then further analyzed a subset of the data between July and August and created our different graphs. In our Alpha Diversity graph the Shanon diversity range is 5.0-5.6 and the Simpson diversity range is 0.981-0.993. For our Abundance graph Cyanobiaceae appears strongly in July and August and Nostocaceae is only prominent in late July. Our Bray NMDS graph showed that our group from August 12th was more tightly clustered together and the July 29th group was loosely clustered together.

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