I am a Senior Research Scientist for the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute and this is one of several pieces made for a project called Wool and Water.

Wool and Water is a data art project that blends fiber art with scientific data to create visual representations of changing water quality conditions in the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin. In association with the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute has embarked on a collaborative fiber arts project supported by the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership to showcase the legacy of protecting clean water in the Lake Champlain Basin and beyond.

Plankton is a piece that highlights the issue of nutrient pollution in Lake Champlain and its impacts on plankton communities. It is based on a study by Bockwoldt et al. (2017) which found reduced phytoplankton and zooplankton diversity associated with increased cyanobacteria in Lake Champlain. The cyanobacteria increase is attributed to increased nutrient input including phosphorus which can contribute to harmful algal blooms.

In this piece the multicolored yarn motifs are meant to represent a variety of zooplankton, while the blue-green are meant to represent blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). As the blue green motifs are increasingly represented at one end of the piece, the other color (zooplankton) are reduced, indicating the observed plankton community shift. I attached the motifs with crochet thread in a random mesh.