People close to the Louisiana coast surely know about the Gulf dead zone, but the same might not be true for farmers upstream in other states. Which brings us back to Toledo. If anything positive came out of Lake Erie's green algae nightmare, it's that the story made national news. If nothing else, it made people aware of the magnitude of the problem—which, according to Alexander, is "not yet part of the national consciousness.
The bigger the Gulf dead zone becomes, and the more frequently health crises like Toledo's occur elsewhere, the more likely the public will be to demand a solution. For now, affected cities are shouldering the burden of a problem they didn't create, paying large sums of money to ensure its residents are safe.
In March , the city decided it had had enough and brought a lawsuit against three upstream agricultural counties responsible for the pollution.
Hopefully, this type of litigation—along with pressure on the EPA from NRDC and other environmental groups—will force both federal and local governments to finally step up to the plate and create enforceable regulations. Because in the end, it all comes down to numbers. As Alexander says, "If you can't measure the problem, you're not even to square one in terms of solving it.
Litter, sewage, plastic, and other pollutants do more than just ruin the beauty of the beach. They are closing down coastal areas, destroying marine life, and making people seriously sick. Ugly, foul-smelling and sometimes toxic, algal blooms are becoming more common in freshwater ecosystems like rivers, lakes, ponds, and reservoirs. Manicured turf grass lawns cover up to 50 million acres of land in America. But a new, no-mow movement is challenging this conformity—and helping the environment.
How do these microscopic plants turn the entire lake green? Now that we know what algae is, we know what is making our lakes mucky and unpleasantly green. An algal bloom is when the number of algae organisms in the lake dramatically increase. Though there may be hundreds of different species of algae present in the lake, a bloom is generally made up of one or two different species of algae. These blooms occur because conditions become just right in the lake, and one species of algae begins to reproduce at an astounding rate.
These algae are able to reproduce because there is an excess of nutrients found in the water. These nutrients, generally phosphorous and nitrogen, tend to collect in lakes. In the summer when there are a few good sunny days in a row, the algae have both the excess nutrients and excess sun needed to bloom in large numbers.
Aside from the green color, and general unpleasant odor of the lake, an algal bloom is nothing to be worried about. Algal blooms are a naturally occurring phenomenon, and are essential for a lake to stay healthy. This excess bloom of plant life provides tons of food for other microorganisms and fish. The algae convert the free floating nutrients into a form edible the algae themselves by the other residents of the lake.
An HAB, simply put, is a bloom that is damaging to the ecosystem of the lake or its inhabitants. A red tide is an algae bloom that occurs in the ocean, it is called a red tide because of the coloration of the algae found in the oceans, which are generally brown to red.
When a lake has a particularly large algal bloom, and the water becomes very murky and green, bad things can start to happen. Algae live very short little lives, and when they die they begin to decay. This decaying process uses up the dissolved oxygen found in a lake. If the algal bloom is particularly large, the amount of decaying algae increases as well, and this can add up to something bad. Summerkill is a term used for a massive death of the fish population of a lake caused by an Algal bloom.
If the number of decaying algae is large enough, the oxygen dissolved in the water can get used up, and the water will become hypoxic. Well, HABs do occur naturally all of the time, but many scientists theorize that they are happening more and more, and it is due to human interaction. These algae blooms are caused by an excess of nutrients found in the lake, as well as the sunny summer days.
While we cannot do much about the summer days, we can have a lot to do with the amount of nutrients in lakes. You would think, more nutrients are better right? Not in this case, lakes have a very delicate balance of nutrients that keep their particular residents well fed year round. Introducing excess nutrients phosphorous and nitrogen can disrupt this balance, and that is definitely not a good thing. Good question. Think about that beautiful front yard you have out there.
Do you use fertilizer to keep it looking nice in these hot summer months? Well, if you do, you know exactly where those excess nutrients are coming from! Those very same plant fertilizers you use on your yard are being sent through the water table and into our fine lakes. Those nutrients you are using to keep your lawn green are keeping the lakes green as well.
Some algae — such as some types of plankton algae — play a vital role in the food chain and ecosystem of your pond or lake. However, some types of algae or algae-related conditions can pose a serious threat to you and all aquatic wildlife living in or near your body of water, such as:.
Algae growth can occur naturally through light exposure, water movement and warm pond temperatures, or as a result of human-made pollution.
Often, algae growth is a side effect of several of these factors culminating at once:. Algae plays a fundamental role in the health of any body of water, but problems arise when blooms grow out of control or the wrong types of algae begin to grow. The most prevalent algae on the planet today is blue-green algae, which feeds on a steady diet of phosphorus and nitrogen.
Fertilizers and other products as well as poor sewage management have contributed to excess nutrients for many years. Practices and products are changing, but in most circumstances the damage has been done. Water bodies can have external sources of nutrients or with time they build up an internal supply of excess nutrients. Along with food, algae require the right amount of light to thrive. Blue-green algae are so common because they have the ability to move throughout the water column and adapt to variable conditions.
Filamentous algae will typically grow around the shoreline of a pond or lake because this is where the shallower water is. You typically will not see filamentous algae growing in the middle of a 20 foot deep water body because that is too deep for the sunlight to penetrate.
Turbidity is a measure of how clear or cloudy a body of water is.
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