GlobalHAB: Evaluating, reducing and mitigating the cost of Harmful Algal Blooms: A Compendium of case studies

Abstract

3 pagesOver the last two decades, several reports have been compiled on what is known about the economic impacts of harmful algal blooms (HABs; e.g., Anderson et al., 2000; Hoagland and Scatasta, 2006; Trainer and Yoshida, 2014, and Sanseverino et al., 2016). Although these reports attempted to gather comprehensive economic impact data, both the type and amount of data available were limited. One past study estimated the cost of HABs in the European Union at $800 million USD per year (Hoagland and Scatasta, 2006) but most of that cost was extrapolated for very few HAB organisms. Furthermore, most countries have neither conducted economic analyses of HABs nor collected data that can be used to generate reliable quantitative estimates of net economic losses and economic impacts. The lack of data, appropriate and standardized protocols, and the dearth of peer-reviewed studies hampers efforts to quantify the societal costs of increasingly frequent, intense and long-lasting HAB events and to help evaluate the cost of various strategies being developed for HAB prevention, control, and mitigation. [...