Eutrophication is a widespread problem that the aquatic habitats of the world are threatened with and need to face.
What Is Eutrophication?
Eutrophication refers to the process wherein a body of water ends up overly enriched with nutrients. This results in the abundance of simple plant life. Such excess growth of plankton and algae in a body of water indicate such a process.
Several lakes are actually naturally eutrophic. However, there are also cases where eutrophication progressively happens as the water body matures.
The "eutrophication" term is widely known in connection to human activities where plant nutrient artificial introduction has resulted in water quality deterioration and community changes. Such an aspect has become more important as the human population increases and as agricultural developments become more extensive.
Aquatic habitats house several animal and plant life forms that are both simple and complex. Such a process of eutrophication ends up destroying the ecosystem's balance by favoring simple plant life growth. This decreases the ecosystem's biodiversity by killing off various species that are desirable.
Eutrophic waters tend to be murky. They also tend to support fewer animals that are larger, such as fish and birds, in comparison to waters that are not eutrophic.
Overly Enriched With Nutrients
Nutrient availability, such as that of phosphorus and nitrogen, end up limiting plant life growth within a particular aquatic ecosystem. When bodies of water end up overly enriched with such nutrients, the growth of plankton, algae, and other kinds of simple plant life end up getting favored over complex plant life growth.
In freshwater ecosystems, phosphorus is considered a primary limiting factor when it comes to plant life growth. Nitrogen is also thought to be crucial in limiting algae growth.
Phosphates have the tendency to stick to soil and end up transported along with it. Hence, soil erosion could majorly contribute to the enrichment of phosphorus in bodies of water. Other sources that are rich in phosphorus and that enrich bodies of water include untreated sewage, fertilizers, industrial waste discharge, and phosphorus-containing detergents.
When algae excessively grow in eutrophic waters, this is typically accompanied by large biomass generation of dead algae. The dead algae end up sinking into the water's bottom, where bacteria breaks it down. Such a process ends up consuming oxygen.
Oxygen overconsumption could result in hypoxic conditions within the water. Such a condition in the water body's lower levels result in suffocation and death of larger life forms, such as that of fish.
Eutrophication Effects
The primary effects of eutrophication in water is the decrease of biodiversity, increase of water toxicity, and species dominance changes.
Other crucial effects include the faster growth of phytoplanktons, faster blooming of gelatinous zooplankton, transparency loss of the water, development of foul smell and color in the water, frequent fish kills, lower populations of harvestable fish and shellfish, new species invasion, and the water body's aesthetic value.
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