To empower learners world-wide to respond to the global water sustainability crisis, UNITAR Global Water Academy and 91��ɫ are launching three new courses today – World Environment Day.

The three free, online courses, , , and , will play a pivotal role in delivering accessible knowledge on freshwater to the global community. The start date for the UNITAR Global Water Academy @ 91��ɫ courses is flexible.

To date, the Global Water Academy has reached 10,000 leaners across 153 countries. The courses build on the Global Water Academy’s focus on social justice, diversity, and the public good.

Professor , director of the UNITAR Global Water Academy @ 91��ɫU, and 91��ɫ Research Chair in Global Change Biology in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Science, says: “The goals of the Global Water Academy and our latest courses highlight our commitment to democratizing education to our global community to work towards achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all.”

These courses are intended to raise awareness and foster action around UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. Learners will receive digital badges and UNTIAR certificated upon completion.

The impacts of climate change on lakes worldwide is highlighted first, in particular how and why lakes around the world are losing ice cover, and how this is relevant to the 2025 World Water Day theme of glacier preservation.

There is also a seminar course taught by international leaders on big data and big data analytics and provide learner with tools on how to acquire and analyze large global water and climate data sets. 

Hillary Birch, PhD student in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change and UNITAR Global Water Academy research assistant, designed the course, , in collaboration with Indigenous researchers across Canada.

“The course itself is full of fantastic clips from Indigenous scholars, elders, and knowledge holders from which people can learn directly,” she says. “The idea is to provide learners with an introduction to different ways of relating to water, particularly from Indigenous perspectives, which treat water very differently from how Western models have of related to water over the past centuries.

It's an effort to provide at least the first way of thinking about water differently and use the long-established knowledge of Indigenous Peoples to begin to shift a little bit of our thinking around how we relate to water and helps address the long challenge of reconciliation in Canada.”

The courses are designed to be engaging and interactive with images, embedded videos of community knowledge holders, multiple choice quizzes, and prompts for reflection. Learners will have the opportunity to engage directly with voices from Indigenous and local communities.

These courses are meticulously designed to encourage reflection and meaningful engagement with the materials. Sachin Satahoo who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering at 91��ɫ and served as the course engineer, hopes they will deepen knowledge in environmental work, encourage learners to respect Indigenous sovereignty and think about water in a reciprocal lens rather than an extractive resource.

“I'm excited for the learners to interact with the courses and go through the text, the visuals, the videos. The course format encourages a reflection and personal connection with the material, helping learners to go through it on a deeper level,” says Satahoo. “I'm proud that the course doesn't just provide information, but rather it invites learners in a new way of thinking, respects Indigenous worldviews, and presents the material in forms which are both accessible and grounded; and being able to support that work through thoughtful design and user experience.”

These courses are available on Moodle and can be viewed here. Visit the course links below to register. Contact ugwacord@yorku.ca for questions or to be added to the Listserv.

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Lake Superior is known for its pristine waters, but a combination of nutrient additions from increasing human activity (including farming and development), warming temperatures and stormy conditions have resulted in more frequent blooms of potentially harmful algae.

 thrive in freshwater systems with warmer water temperatures and elevated nutrient inputs, typical of highly urbanized and agricultural landscapes.

Cyanobacterial blooms have the potential to produce toxins, such as  and other , that can .

These toxins can create an unpleasant taste and odor in water, interfere with water treatment, cause gastrointestinal issues and liver damage in humans and have even .

Unfortunately, as the planet warms, more and more parts of Canada are experiencing harmful algal blooms. Our team has set out to try and understand the extent of the problem in Lake Superior, and what can be done about it.

Blooms in the Great Lakes

Cyanobacterial blooms are no stranger to the Laurentian Great Lakes. Each summer, Lake Erie, the smallest and warmest Great Lake, is .

These blooms happen when hot temperatures occur in areas of fresh water where nutrient runoff drains. For example, Lake Erie is ringed with rich agricultural fields and urban development, the runoff from which often results in summer algal blooms. In 2014, a harmful algal bloom formed within the drinking water supply of Toledo, Ohio, affecting more than .

Until recently, cyanobacterial blooms were never recorded in Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is the largest, coldest and arguably the healthiest of the Great Lakes, owing to its . Cold water temperatures and low nutrient concentrations have historically inhibited the growth of algae.

At the same time, Lake Superior is one of the  on the planet. In the past 150 years, Lake Superior has . During the winter of 2024, only 12 per cent of Lake Superior’s surface was covered in ice, one-fifth of a typical winter.

Less ice cover has led to a , resulting in  during the summer. Longer and warmer summers provide optimal conditions for algae to proliferate and for cyanobacteria to bloom.

 along the southern shores of Lake Superior for the past decade.  were first documented in 2012 and every year since 2016. In 2018, the largest bloom stretched over 100 kilometres, with reports that the waters turned an opaque green.

Evidence of cyanobacterial blooms along the northern shores of Lake Superior have been . Confirmed reports to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks , northeast of Thunder Bay. Subsequent blooms were noted in July 2021 in Black Bay, a less developed area of western Lake Superior, again in July and September 2023 and , in the municipality of Shuniah.

While there is no evidence of toxicity in the blooms on the northern side of Lake Superior, sampling revealed that nearly all cyanobacteria species identified can generate toxins. However, it is not yet known under which environmental conditions cyanobacteria “switch” to become .

Changing conditions

Reports of  and rivers suggest that climate change plays an important role in the . Cyanobacteria are more tolerant of  and can make themselves more buoyant, allowing them to out-compete other algae for light.

In the , climate change is also contributing to more frequent and intense storms. Strong precipitation events lead to high rates of water runoff that mix nutrients from the watershed into local water bodies. For example, the  in 2018 stemmed from .

The public health risks from cyanotoxins underscore the importance of addressing global environmental degradation to prevent the proliferation of these species. These occasional blooms highlight the need for continued monitoring and public awareness to protect the health of Lake Superior’s northern nearshore regions.

Limiting the amount of nutrients delivered to water bodies is critical to .  could include reducing the use of fertilizer, changing the timing of fertilizer application to limit the amount of nutrients entering lakes and tributaries, promoting infrastructure in urban environments to reduce storm-water runoff and conserving wetlands and riparian vegetation.

This article is part of The Conversation's series��.��This summer, The Conversation and����invite you to take a fascinating dip in our lakes. With magnifying glasses, microscopes and diving goggles, our scientists scrutinize the biodiversity of our lakes and the processes that unfold in them, and tell us about the challenges they face. Don’t miss our articles on these incredibly rich bodies of water!

By Professor, 91��ɫ Research Chair in Global Change Biology and director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Global Water Academy, and , a postdoctoral researcher in 91��ɫ's Department of Biology

This article is republished from��.��

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