The Importance Of Phosphorus In The Great Lakes

Pollution of Lake Huron has been over the years either through direct point sources or through non-point indirect sources (Saxena 1116). Direct point sources include sewage treatment firms and industries, which direct their wastes directly into Lake Huron and its tributaries. Nonpoint sources indirectly pollute water from the Lake, and majorly caused by man's activities and land policies applied by the man.

The culprit this time around is the farmland that makes up 63% of the Lake Erie watershed, or, more specifically, the potent phosphorous fertilizers being improperly applied to the land (McLean et al., 2014). Growing demand for food has placed increased pressure on farmers’ crop production, so many farmers compromise using more fertilizer less efficiently in

Many contaminants settle out of the atmosphere, such as acid rain, the pollutants and nutrients will transport from distant places by air depositing into the lake as the form of rain. The first pollutants as atmospheric deposition on the Great Lakes were phosphorus. It is found that about 20 percent phosphorus entering Lake Michigan comes from the atmosphere by determination of rain, snow and dust. Since phosphorus pollution generated by this approach cannot be controlled, so it is more urgent to reduce the phosphorus content of detergent, sewer and effluent fertilizers. People found fish in a lake of Lake Superior in a remote island containing PCBs and toxaphene, and this place isolated with no direct way to pollution. This determines the long-range transport of pollutants through the atmosphere and settlement in the lake. In fact the processes of material transport through atmospheric was very complex. For instance PCBs was insoluble in water, so as to re-enter the atmosphere during evaporation or connected together into small particles. A lot of PCBs volatilize from the lake, meanwhile, PCBs coming from various parts of the air mass experience the sedimentation on the lake. Other than that the contaminated sediment is another way to cause pollution of the lake. This is problems of the most urban industrial areas. Even if there is likely to remove severely contaminated sediments in

The Great Lakes have been under threat for the last two centuries, but the situation is the far worse today. It use to be believed that dumping sewage or chemicals into rivers and lakes was a great way to dilute and disperse it. As it turns out, it's not a good idea since those are the very rivers and lakes that we get our drinking water from. In recent decades, a lot has been done to stop that practice, but the sources and amount of pollution keeps skyrocketing each year. This pollution in the lakes must be stop at once or else bad consequences will be appond us because of it

Just a few miles away, our Great Lakes are being ravaged by plastic particles being released throughout. Issues around the world regarding water have always been prevalent. Dehydration kills about 2.2 million children every year. We can not stand idle by as a possible solution degrades daily right next to us. Lake Erie is known as the most polluted of the Great Lakes however, Lake Michigan is close behind. Due to the boom in industry in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas during the Industrial Revolution, and the disregard of the environmental impact, Michigan has already absorbed a large amount of pollutants. Only one percent of the water in the Great Lakes leave the

Back to the history, the eutrophication problem was first time concerned by public on Great lakes at the 1960s, the Lake Erie was covered by algae as a result of over dumped phosphorus from the sewage and other waste water, at that time, the Lake Erie was known as the “Dead Sea of North America”(Fitzpatrick, J. J., and Di Toro 1999). The reason cause this problem can be concluded in 2 points, 1. the stresses of overfishing, 2. development of phosphorus-based detergents. At the end of 1960, the Canada and the United States have realized the penetrance of this problem and finally sit on the table to sign an agreement that limiting phosphorus dumps to the Lake Erie, and plan to control existing unstoppable algal growth. Because of the awareness of Canada and US government, the concentration of phosphorus got a significant success. And this problem happened again during the 1990s, but this time the reason why this happen is more complexly.

Water pollution in a unique ecological system called the Great Lakes has recently become a national problem for the two countries - the USA and Canada. The primary ways by which the Great Lakes were polluted for many centuries include wastewater discharge, toxic pollution of water with heavy metals and pesticides, soil erosion, as well as urbanization and, consequently, air pollution.

Hello I am Rokhaya, I am a 20 year old, qualified Marine Biologists by the University of California, Los Angeles: Marine Biology Major. I live in Kitch-iti-kipi Michigan. Over 19 years I have studied the Great Lakes(I started studying in 1949) I have noticed a major difference from the 1950s to 2017.

The Great Lakes, including Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, are the largest freshwater lakes in the world, accounts for about 18% of the world 's fresh water resources. They are rich in water and other resources and the area of the Great Lakes extend more than 1200 km. The storage capacity of Great Lakes is about 23000 km3 and the surface area is around 244000 km2. Nowadays 1/10 of the Americans and a quarter of Canadians live in the lakes. Some of the world 's largest industrial center is built on here. Almost 25% of total agricultural production in Canada and 7% in the United States will yield in this area. Although the area of the lake is large, it could be affected by a wide range of pollutions vulnerably. Lakes pollution sources include soil runoff, agricultural chemicals, municipal waste, industrial emissions and waste disposal exudate. It is vulnerable to be affected by the pollutants company with rain, snow and dust in the atmosphere because of the broad surfaces of the lakes. The outflows from the Great Lakes are less than the total storage capacity so that the pollutants directly discharged into the lake from the coast or tributaries of the lake would be retained in the lake in the system. Consequently, the concentration of pollutants will be increasingly higher as time goes on. Furthermore they will stay in the system and continue to cycle through the food chain in the ecosystem because of the re-suspended sediments. Other than

Anderson, D. M., Burkholder, J. M., Cochlan, W. P., Glibert, P. M., Gobler, C. J., Heil, C. A., & ... Vargo, G. A. (2008). Harmful algal blooms and eutrophication: Examining linkages from selected coastal regions of the United States. Harmful Algae, 8(HABs and Eutrophication), 39-53. doi:10.1016/j.hal.2008.08.017

Extremely important to organisms, phosphorus is a key ingredient to our DNA, RNA and the molecule ATP (responsible for giving living things energy). Discovered in 1669, phosphorus is used in fertilisers, safety matches, pyrotechnics, steel manufacturing and even in some detergents. Phosphorus is an important nutrient to both plants and animals as it contributes to the cell development. When facing not enough phosphorus, produce can decrease majorly.

Water pollution is a very real problem that countries all around the world are facing. This contamination typically comes from either domestic origin or industrial waste. Many measures have been taken in order to prevent water pollution but most methods are costly and inefficient. One of the most common types of chemical pollution in waters is phosphate contamination. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Gulf of Mexico is a prime example of water that has extremely high levels of phosphate and it comes to no surprise that it has detrimental effects its environment. The effects of phosphate contamination

The disruption of the phosphorous cycle is not a likely know, reason being is that this cycle is one that’s takes years to complete. When we mine for example we are accelerating the cycle, this effect can cause phosphorous to be found in areas where you would not typically find it, this can affect the cleanliness of fresh water.

When phosphate enter enter the waterway from humans, animal, fertilizers runoff, laundry, cleaning, and industrial effluents, it can over fertilize the aquatic plants and cause eutrophication. If there is too much phosphate in the water, the algae and the weeds will grow rapidly. This could block the waterway and/or suffocate the aquatic life. Phosphates help the growth of plankton and aquatic plants which is food for fish, but if there is too much phosphate they will grow rapidly, using a lot of oxygen. As all the plants die, it uses up oxygen which in turn lowers the dissolved oxygen in the water, killing the aquatic life.

Back in the 1970s, the U.S. government recognized the problem of phosphorus pollution -- it can cause massive algal blooms in waterways that screw with ecosystems by robbing the water and aquatic life of all-important oxygen -- and started trying to come up with alternatives. Meanwhile, states and localities became more and more aware of the undesirable effects of phosphorus and began acting on their own to limit or restrict its use in laundry detergents, the first places being five cities in Illinois in 1971. (Way to go, Illinoisans!) By the 1990s, enough states and localities had limited or restricted laundry-detergent phosphates that detergent companies saw the writing on the machine and decided to voluntarily phase them out in all domestic