Jonathan Khan December 5, 2010

Ms. Crowley AP Biology Lab 12: Dissolved Oxygen, and Primary Aquatic Productivity

9. What is Eutrophication? Research and explain why allowing nitrogen or phosphorous fertilizers to run

into a body of water can negatively affect life in it.

a. The continued and overuse of fertilizers.

b. Continued overuse of fertilizers has the effect of removing a limiting factor. This in turn affects

organisms which depend on having that specific factor in a finite amount. An example of this can

be shown in algae blooms. Due to an excess of the phosphorous and nitrogen containing

compounds phosphates PO43- and nitrates NO3- respectively in the soil, some of it eventually will

run off into a bony of water such has a pond. The excess phosphates and nitrates promote the

growth of algae. When the algae die, they fall to the bottom, reducing the depth of the pond.

After time, the pond dries up due to an increaspe in the amount of organic material that keeps

building up on the bottom of the pond. Any organisms which were dependent on the pond for

survival are now dead due to the pond drying up. On a larger scale, algae blooms on the ocean

block sunlight. Phytoplanktons are dependent on sunlight in order to make food, and to keep the

amount of oxygen dissolved in the water at a set point. When the plankton are unable to receive

sunlight due to the algae on the surface blocking it, they die. When the plankton die, there is

almost no way to replace the amount of oxygen that the plankton place in the water. This leads to

dead zones in the ocean due to the uninhabitable conditions of the water due to a low

concentration of dissolved oxygen.