ToolboxSatelliteHistorical Survey - Algal Blooms

Satellite

Historical Survey - Algal Blooms

Name: Historical Survey - Algal Blooms
Brand: Lake Pulse
Price: 900.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Twenty years of bloom history, without twenty years of monitoring.

$900

Checkout arrives with the store connection. Orders attach to the lake on your account.

Overview

Archived satellite imagery reconstructed into a bloom record for your lake — how harmful algal blooms have changed over time, when they start, how long they last, and whether they are getting worse.

Available in high-resolution and low-resolution formats, in three tiers.

This is the one measurement you cannot start collecting today. The satellite record already exists; the question is whether anyone has looked at it for your water.

What you get & how it's made

1 parameter

What you get & how it's made for Historical Survey - Algal Blooms
Index layer	What's reported
Bloom index	Time series and bloom-frequency map across available years

Bloom index
What's reported:
Time series and bloom-frequency map across available years

You get

Historical bloom maps and a time series, in your Portal
Written summary of where and when blooms recur

How it's produced

Source: Sentinel-2 satellite imagery (2015 onward); earlier years from Landsat
Base image: NAIP aerial photography
Resolution: Pixel size shown on every image (typically 10–30 m)
Minimum lake size: About 25 acres
Processed by: Lake Pulse, automated; cloud-affected scenes excluded
Delivery: Within 15 business days

Product category

ServiceReport delivered to your Portal
ServiceBy the Lake Pulse Boathouse

Delivered digitally
Available in delivered within 15 business days of ordering. contact the boathouse if you need a specific date range confirmed for coverage first.
Delivery
Delivered to your Portal — no shipping, no waiting on a box.
SKU
LP-HIST-HAB-4

Example result

Late-summer blooms in 11 of 20 years

Where and when, not which organism or toxin

Turnaround

Delivered within 15 business days of ordering. Contact the Boathouse if you need a specific date range confirmed for coverage first.

What problem does this solve for our lake?

Every lake community has a shared memory of how the lake used to be, and it is unreliable in a specific direction: recent events are vivid and old ones are compressed. That makes "the blooms are getting worse" impossible to argue with and impossible to prove.
Satellite archives settle it. Bloom extent, timing, and frequency reconstructed across two decades produces a trend line rather than a recollection — and that trend is what a grant reviewer, an agency, or a sceptical board member responds to.
It also answers the question nobody can answer from field data: whether this year was genuinely unusual. Field monitoring starts when concern starts, which means the years before the concern are exactly the years you lack.

What's included?

Historical bloom reconstruction from archived satellite imagery
Bloom extent, timing, duration, and frequency over the covered period
Trend analysis across the record
Three tiers available, in high-resolution and low-resolution formats
Delivered as an interpreted report, not raw imagery
Results loaded into your lake's account

What's not included

Field sampling or laboratory chemistry. Satellite observation infers conditions from reflectance; it does not measure water.
Detection of anything below the surface. This is a surface-optical method.
Toxin measurement or species identification
Guaranteed coverage on any given date. Cloud cover and satellite revisit intervals decide what imagery exists.
Regulatory or compliance determinations

Requirements

Your lake's location and boundary
A lake of about 25 acres or more. Smaller lakes, narrow arms, and coves can fall below the image resolution.
The time period you want covered, and the question behind it
Realistic expectations about cloud gaps. Some dates simply have no usable imagery, and no amount of processing recovers them.
A Plus, Lake Admin, or PRO subscription to have results loaded into your Lake Pulse account
Contact the Lake Pulse Boathouse if you have questions.

What you get back

Results

A documented bloom history for your lake, going back years before anyone was monitoring
Trend analysis showing whether frequency, extent, or duration are changing
Context for the current season — whether this year is unusual or ordinary
Evidence for grant applications and agency conversations that field data alone cannot provide
Results load into your lake's Data Library in the Lake Pulse Portal
Data can be charted in the Analytics Hub, used to trigger alerts, or shared across your lake community
Results are found in your lake's portal, accessible only to Plus, Lake Admin, and PRO subscription tiers

Pro tips

Buy the longest record you can afford. The value is in the trend, and short records produce noise.
Cloud gaps are normal. A summer with three usable images still tells you something; expecting continuous coverage does not.
Pair it with current monitoring. History explains the pattern; a buoy catches this year's event.
This is the strongest grant attachment in the satellite line. Documented worsening over two decades is precisely what restoration programmes fund.
Check against local memory. Where the record and the recollection disagree, the record is usually right — and that conversation is worth having with the board before the report circulates.

Results sync to the Portal for Plus, Lake Admin, and PRO subscribers

Results from this product land in your lake's shared record in the Portal — next to everything else your lake has ever measured, instead of in an inbox.

Compare subscriptions

About these results

Every image shows the date it was captured. Satellite products are derived from reflected light recorded as a satellite passes over your lake. Values are relative indices, not laboratory concentrations, and cannot identify an organism, a toxin, or a pollutant. Cloud, haze, sun glint, shallow water, and shoreline effects can distort or hide the signal, and small lakes, narrow arms, and coves may fall below the image resolution. Conditions can change within hours of a pass. The absence of a detected bloom does not mean the water is safe. Results can help you make decisions about safe swimming and water use, but no result is definitive for every place and time. It is always good practice to check posted signs and your state or local health authorities.

Questions on this?

Our team can help you choose the right solution for your lake, explain how results sync to your Portal, or point you to the right subscription.

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