For my news report project I found an article from Science News on extreme levels of phosphorous finding its way into freshwater bodies throughout the entire planet. Phosphorous is a natural occurring element on the earth but with humans high impact we are spreading more than healthy amounts into multiple ecosystems. Humans use this element in factories, fertilizer, and other agricultural reasons. After we use the resource it does not just disappear or become eliminated. After use it typically becomes runoff and flows into grasslands or bodies of water. This element increases growth rates of many plants and specifically algae and acts like a fertilizer. With increased rates of algae growth it disturbs the equilibrium of the ecosystem and in turn greatly affects the well being of the other species in the ecosystem. Ecosystems are complex systems that have deeply interconnected components. If these components are disturbed or manipulated then a shift in the entire system can occur.

This article actually just touches upon the deep seeded affects that algal blooms have and just spoke of the depletion of drinking water for humans and any other organism trying to consume this fresh water. The fact that these blooms have made the water toxic to drink is the main downside that actually has a negative affect on humans and has caused a major environmental problem. I feel this article could have gone much more in depth with this great problem, for they barely scrapped the surface of the whole problem. This problem is directly caused by humans yet most of society does not feel responsible or know it has even been occurring.

Phosphorous levels have become toxic to certain ecosystems and are even creating “dead zones”, not only affecting the safety of drinking water but other lives also. A dead zone is when there are so many algal blooms occurring the algae consumes all of the resources in the environment, for example: depletion of all oxygen in the water, blocking of sunlight from hitting the waterbed, creates a new toxic element that makes an area inhabitable, raises total suspended solids in the water. This event can happen quite quickly also. Algae is a quick growing organism, filling the bodies of water and destroying large areas that thousands of organisms would have inhabited and killing those organisms that were living there.

I was drawn to this article because I actually have a background knowledge of this specific topic. Last year I took a Biology lab class that based all of its research off of one river that was polluted and had algal blooms occurring. We had to do multiple experiment on different aspects of the river like TSS and Turbidity, Phosphorous levels, Oxygen levels, fish population levels, and testing different sites with different pollution sources at these sites (factory, overpass, farm). We were to solve the problem of why so many fish were dying in this river. We concluded that the oxygen levels were just too low to inhabit fish and this was caused by the blooms. The fish could live with the levels of phosphorous but because there was too much algae in the water there just wasn’t enough oxygen to go around. This experiment made me realize the true complexity of a system and how small things can make a huge impact on the system as a whole. It is fact that humans are causing this problem and it is fact that we need to solve and fix this problem as soon as possible. More care towards runoff with a drive to treat the environment with respect would be a wonderful start.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/humans-are-overloading-worlds-freshwater-bodies-phosphorus