Water Quality In The U-High Creek: A Case Study

Even though, fertilizers are needed to supply essential nutrients to the growth of plants; an excess of them is one of the major issues contributing to pollution in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Fertilizers are mainly composed of two elements: nitrogen and phosphorus.(4) Throughout the years, millions of pounds of this nutrients are applied all around the Chesapeake Bay Watershed; everything not absorbed by the soil or taken up by plants eventually reaches the Chesapeake Bay through storm-water runoff. This nutrients end up creating algae blooms in the water, which reduce the amount of sunlight available to underwater grasses; not allowing plants to photosynthesize and produce the food they need to survive. Algae then decomposes creating dead zones killing fish and other species since oxygen is needed for any organism to live. (5)

Did you ever wonder how things you do everyday effect the Chesapeake Bay watershed and Its tributaries? Well, It turns out to be not so good. One of the main causes for the Bay’s bad health are nutrients which are caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the air and water. Plants and animals need nutrients to survive but when too many nutrients are in the water they fuel the growth of algae blooms and create conditions that are harmful for aquatic creatures.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in our lakes, rivers, streams, and drinking water sources cause the degradation of these water bodies and harm fish, wildlife, and human health." In the 2000 National Water Quality Inventory, states reported that agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution was the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and lakes, as well as the second largest source of impairments to wetlands, and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and groundwater. Agricultural activities that cause NPS pollution include poorly located or managed animal feeding operations; overgrazing; plowing too often or at the wrong time; and improper, excessive or poorly timed application of pesticides, irrigation water and fertilizer. Since the 1960s, the high input of agriculture production has resulted in the surplus of nitrogen and phosphorus in farm fields, which run off into surface waters. High concentrations of nitrates and phosphates in surface waters could lead to eutrophication and instability of the aquatic ecosystems. Eutrophication is caused by the over-enrichment of water with phosphates and nitrates, a problem that has become a widespread in rivers, lakes, estuaries, and coastal

The Deep Creek Water Quality Initiative Project offers funds for you to protect water quality and prevent soil erosion! This project is to demonstrate Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS) practices which will address water quality priorities identified in the watershed.

Eutrophication is the slow process that occurs naturally in aquatic ecosystems, such as lakes and ponds. It is a result of an aging body of water gradually increasing its concentration of nutrients. This happens because the intervaling death and growth of organisms that, for whatever given reason, don’t cancel each other out, and modify the fertility of the ecosystem. Eutrophication is not inherently bad, but the hastening of this process through artificial means can be very harmful to the ecosystem, and ultimately end in failure.

Water. Popular to common misconception there is only 1 type of water, misconception being freshwater and saltwater, saltwater is a mixture from churned up sand and salt from the seabed where freshwater is moss and inland (not connected to the ocean in any way) .Water or otherwise known as H2O is includes both chemical and physical properties. Water can be identified in 3 different states of matter, solid, liquid and gas, known as ice, water and steam in order to reach these three states of matter you must allow it to be put under different environmental measures, which is temperature. To make ice water is to be cooled to 0 degrees Celsius and under, for water you must keep the temperature in-between 1 and 99 degrees

On October 6 of 2017, I arrived at the Conodoguinet creek with a mission of solving a question that burned inside all of my fellow students' minds. Was the creek polluted? If so, heavily polluted or only slightly? How would this affect the organisms that lived off of the creek? These were all questions that would hopefully be answered by myself today, and if not by myself then by my peers. A big reason that the water may not be at its best is because of eutrophication, which is too many nutrients in the water. This can occur because the creek has many farms and sewage plants that runoff into the water. With the creek being over 100 miles long, it is also made up of 682 tributaries. The name ‘Conodoguinet’ is Indian, and it means “a long way

Planting on riparian areas promote bank stabilization and water quality protections. The roots of riparian trees and shrubs help stream banks to be held in place, preventing excessive erosion. The vegetation also traps sediment and pollutants, keeping the water cleaner. Streams and rivers are also protected

An abundant amount of phosphorus and nitrogen may cause eutrophication, which has many negative effects on aquatic ecosystems (table 2).

Nonpoint sources are the leading contributors to water pollution in the United States, the largest of which is agriculture. Contributing factors are the use of fertilizer, tile drainage, and the need to feed a growing global population. Polluted water is the root of many environmental problems. Eutrophication, hypoxia, and algae blooms are caused by an excess of

The water quality of the U-High creek was found to be excellent. Though the water has excellent quality, some other creeks have very poor water quality. This bad water is due to pollution, and pollution comes from humans. One way water quality can be tainted is pollution from farms. Fertilizer and farm waste can be very harmful to creek water quality. The fertilizer used on crops/ fields can runoff the fields and into creeks due to lots of rain. The chemical pollution in the water leads to high level of nitrate and phosphate. Algae uses this to grow very fast (eutrophication) and then dies and breaks down by bacteria which quickly multiple and use up all the oxygen killing the organisms in the water (Lenntech, 1998-2016). A second way that creeks can become polluted is through chemical waste from industrial companies. Chemical waste from industrial processes are sometimes accidentally dumped into rivers. Some of these chemicals include cyanide, zinc, lead, mercury, cadmium and copper. These toxins may enter the

There is an urgent need to improve water quality of the Columbia Slough Watershed. Urban development has resulted in an extensive loss of vegetation and habitat which has resulted in increased water temperature and decreased capacity to filter pollutants and sediments from runoff (City of Portland Environmental Services, 2005). The watershed also serves as an important wildlife corridor, especially for migrating salmon. However, upstream passage of salmon is prevented due to levees.

Humans often use fertilizers in order to increase product production and ensure a healthy crop. In recent years it has been found that large amounts of artificial nitrogen in fertilizer has been used to increase the overall crop rates, to meet the demands of the increased growth rates within the human population ( Zhang, Wang, and Wu 2014). Based on these findings we were lead to question why or if increased levels of fertilizer impair aquatic ecosystems. Therefore we conducted research to find the correlation with increased levels of fertilizer and algae production. To conduct our research we obtained three samples from Dolese Pond, and within two of these samples fertilizer was added. After the fertilizer was added, measurements of dissolved oxygen, within each sample, were then taken over a course of four weeks. Our results offered that within the initial measurements the control held the least amount of dissolved oxygen while the sample with the added 10 mL of fertilizer yielded the highest amounts of dissolved oxygen. Dissolved oxygen concentrations need to be maintained within bodies of water due to the fact that this oxygen is needed to support life while preserving the health for the overall aquatic environment (Bailey and Ahmadi 2014).

Nutrient pollution is responsible for hundreds of dead zones across the world’s oceans lakes and estuaries, and the number and size of them is growing. Many of these dead zones cover thousands of square miles where almost nothing lives (National Science Foundation, n.d., Worldwide Dead Zones section, para. 1). Nutrient pollution, also known as eutrophication occurs when nutrients, most commonly nitrogen and phosphorus, from industrial, agricultural, residential, and airborne sources enter the water in high concentrations. This process results in water that is too rich in nutrients. This in turn causes a chain of events that can cause widespread ecological damage to both aquatic ecosystems. In order to reduce nutrient pollution to sustainable levels and prevent a manmade ecological disaster, mankind must stem the flow of nutrients into our waterways by regulating the sources that contribute to it.

Freshwater shrimp feed on the algae that grows as a result. The streams are kept clean by the freshwater shrimp eating the dead matter . Organisms such as fish would then die as sunlight cannot reach the other water plants, and the oxygen content of the water subsequently decreases too. Oxygen then decreases more because of decomposition by bacteria breaks down dead plant matter. According to Art Eutrophication is “The process by which a body of water acquires a high concentration of nutrients, especially phosphates and nitrates. These typically promote excessive growth of algae. As the algae die and decompose, high levels of organic matter and the decomposing organisms deplete the water of available oxygen, causing the death of other organisms, such as fish. Eutrophication is a natural, slow-aging process for a water body, but human activity greatly speeds up the process.” This has a direct impact on fish, their main predators who cannot not survive in low levels of oxygen, leading to an increase in freshwater shrimp