CyanoLakes is implementing a project to provide the South African public with information that protects them from toxic cyanobacteria blooms. Funded by the Water Research Commission, the three-year project seeks to exploit satellite-based earth observation data to monitor more than 100 dams around the country, providing historical as well as real-time information. The Earth Observation National Eutrophication Monitoring Programme (EONEMP) website that has been launched provides the service free to South Africans. For the present time, only historical information is available, since the satellite providing the information went silent in 2012. But by the end of 2016 new data from the Sentinel-3 mission of the European Space Agency will allow real time services to resume. The site, http://eonemp.cyanolakes.com, allows scientists, government and the public to access and view information such as the risk level from cyanobacteria, algae and cyanobacteria concentrations, and information on trophic status (nutrient enrichment) in various user friendly formats. EONEMP is a collaborative effort between CyanoLakes, the Department of Water and Sanitation, the Centre for High Performance Computing, CSIR and SANSA. CyanoLakes was the winner of the Copernicus Masters Ideas Challenge competition in 2014.
Contact Dr. Mark William Matthews, CyanoLakes, mark@cyanolakes.com
