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The Effects Of Water On Our Human Lives

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Introduction: Water is not only a necessity to our everyday lives, but it also serves as an important component when it comes to recreation. Knowing how to manage a lake or reservoir for these different aspects is a key ingredient to satisfying our human needs; for survival as well as leisure. Because less than 1% of all water on Earth is safe for humans to drink, it is crucial that these waters be carefully managed to sustain current and future generations. Water-based recreation, such as fishing, is important to millions of individuals throughout the world, thus it also has a large economic impact. These types of lentic ecosystems are directly and indirectly related to their lotic ecosystem counterparts. Because lentic ecosystems are…show more content…
Cultural eutrophication involves the artificial influx of nutrients into an aquatic ecosystem and can have severe effects on the organisms that live within the ecosystem (Anders and Ashley 2007). The most common source of these influxes of nutrients comes in the form of surrounding terrestrial runoff and atmospheric input, thus being very sensitive to seasonal inputs (Guildford and Hecky 2000). Within the last few decades there has been a new process arise from the other end of the spectrum, termed cultural oligotrophication, which is actually the opposite of eutrophication; it is the result of a human induced reduction of the naturally occurring nutrients that occur in an aquatic system (Anders and Ashley 2007). Waters affected by this type of oligotrophication tend to be very clear and lack the nutrients that they would have had they not been altered to be aesthetically pleasing to the human eye, thus having poor biological productivity (Anders and Ashley 2007).
Understanding that we need to manage lakes in a way that is in the best interest of the lake, and not so that it is aesthetically pleasing, is vital to keeping these lakes healthy for years to come.
The objective of this study was to compare the nutrient (phosphate and nitrate) loads of two reservoirs constructed for different purposes (one for drinking water and the other for recreation), determine if the lakes were in a stable state for each of their purposes, and propose a
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