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Lake Okeechobee is Florida's largest lake, the largest lake in the Southeast United States, and the second largest lake contained entirely within the United States. The history of this inland sea is marked both by natural processes, and more recently human development and intervention. Adventurers can explore this behemoth of a waterway via the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail that enriches it, a part of the Florida National Scenic Trail. This paper synthesizes major natural and human-induced perturbations that shaped the lake and ultimately the trail that encircles it to create a narrative of Florida's great lake. The story of Lake Okeechobee is a story of battles, first between the land and sea, then between the lake itself and humankind. For the past few centuries Lake Okeechobee's natural perturbations in water flow and flooding resisted the control of man, until recently when man triumphed, managing to control the flow of water in and out of the lake. Unfortunately, with this new found control a new bioecological threat in the form of harmful algal blooms has emerged, which again threatens the health and livelihood of South Floridians. Currently there are new efforts that seek to restore Lake Okeechobee towards a more natural state in an effort to thwart the blooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present AquaNutriOpt, a user-friendly Python package designed to tackle a complex combinatorial optimization problem aimed at optimizing nutrient management for the control of harmful algal blooms. This optimization process involves the identification of optimal Best Management Practices (BMPs) and Treatment Technologies (TTs). AquaNutriOpt is constructed based on a novel integer programming model, which we present in this paper. The package can accommodate various user inputs, automatically transforming them into an optimization model, and then solving it using a free solver. To demonstrate AquaNutriOpt's efficacy, we conduct a series of experiments on two watersheds around Lake Okeechobee in Florida, USA. These experiments illustrate that the optimal BMPs/TTs obtained by AquaNutriOpt can significantly reduce Phosphorus loads into the lake across various budget scenarios. We validate the results by running simulations with the process-based Watershed Assessment Model (WAM), confirming that the estimated percentage reductions closely align with the reports from WAM. • We study controlling harmful algal blooms (HABs) through nutrient optimization. • We develop a novel mathematical optimization model for nutrient optimization. • We develop a software package in Python based on the proposed model. • We show the efficacy of the package in a case study in Lake Okeechobee in Florida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite years of efforts to improve water quality, harmful algal blooms remain a chronic phenomenon, with devastating environmental, economic, and social impacts in many regions worldwide. In this study, we assessed the complexity of nutrient pollution attributed to harmful algal blooms in South Florida (USA) by analyzing 20 years of flow and nutrient data within two headwater basins in the Lake Okeechobee (LO) watershed. The study used an established advanced regression method, the Weighted Regression on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) method, as an analysis framework to examine the impact of nutrient management practices on water quality trends. The WRTDS method produced total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) concentration and flux trends, which were then compared with existing and historic nutrient management records within the basin. Results from this study highlight divergences in progress to improve water quality. Nutrient management practices only had a weak impact on TP and TN flux trends in one of the two basins, where TP flux decreased 2% per year, and TN flux decreased 0.1% per year. TP and TN flux increased in the second basin. Variances of improvement between the two basins are likely attributable to differences in contemporary point source loading and legacy nutrient pools from non-point source inputs 20 years or more before the analysis period. The long-lasting impacts of legacy nutrients also emphasize a need for investments in technologies and practices that can withdraw nutrients from enriched soil and water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]