- Yarish and his seaweed that he uses to clean out our lakes.-When run off from fertilized areas and sewage treatment plants reach rivers and lakes it causes a huge problem. This is a water pollution problem called eutrophication. Eutrophication causes unhealthy levels of nitrogen and phosphurus in the water, these extra nutrients cause whats called an algal bloom. This is when algae grows rapidly in lakes and rivers. The algae deprives the water of oxygen making a dead zone where animals are unable to live. A man named Charles Yarish found a way to extract these extra nutrients using shellfish and seaweed. These two species can take out organic and inorganic nutrients from water. He recently began cleaning up the Bronx River. His efforts are helping us all.
- I never knew run off could be so harmful to our lakes and rivers. The human population is the cause of this. We should use less fertilizer and grow crops more naturally. If we did this then Yarish wouldn't have to be working so hard to extract the extra nutrients from our lakes and rivers. Lakes and rivers are a major source of freshwater for me and all human beings. They are a huge part of our life and if they are polluted we will soon run out of freshwater and won't be able to survive.
- If we did not use fertilizer would this still be a problem?
- Will we be able to clean out our lakes and rivers before they are to polluted?
- Does extra nitrogen and phosphurus have any effect on global warming?
Ohh i forgot my link http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/the-seaweed-and-shellfish-solution?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EMagazineIssueFeed+%28E+Magazine+Print+Issue+Feed%29
ReplyDeleteI knew about run off and this algae problem. I would go fishing and camping and some of the areas on the ponds/lakes would have dead zones and we wouldn't catch any fish since they would be dead. I think that the extra nitrogen and phosphorus have an effect on global warming. It's effecting the ecosystems in the lakes and rivers which could effect other ecosystems. This could be a chain reaction.
ReplyDeleteI always knew that water pollution was a problem but, didn't know that they have looked into it so much to give it a name. With eutrophication creating dead zones in lakes, this could be a huge problem because lakes provide much of the available fresh drinking water. These contaminates in the water may create a fiasco in the future since fresh water on the earth is so slight compared to salt water. When I swim in lakes during the summer the algae does create a problem for the fish's environments but is better for humans because we don't have swim the animals.
ReplyDelete~Could this problem get into our available drinking water?
~When farmers fertilize their fields does it help create this Eutrophication?
~Does this go through streams to salt water?
I knew that we had a water pollution problem but i didnt think we could get it from runoff. We need the fish and other animals to stay alive so we need to stop pollution. That is all you hear about nowadays that pollution is a problem. Humans really need to take a stand and fix this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/NPS/index.html this also talks about the same thing about too much pollution from run off
- How can we stop this?
-Can this happen in oceans
-Will more people start to use the seeweed and shellfish method
Water pollution is a common term that I am very familiar with but I did not know all the facts about the algae build up. When I think of algae, I compare it to a weed in my mom's garden. With algae totaling up, organisms cannot co-exist. Dead zones are becoming a serious issue which result in the deaths of many organisms. I was intrigued to hear about the efforts of Yarish. I further researched and found a pretty cool article about his studies. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-seaweed-trend-purification.html
ReplyDelete-Will Yarish's example lead a significant change?
-What are some specific examples of this algae build up?
-Is a controlled amount of algae good for the water?