Why study the effects of nutrients on aquatic life?
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nutrient pollution has consistently ranked as one of the top three causes of degradation in U.S. streams and rivers for decades. Excessive nutrients and resulting in-stream plant biomass (amount or weight of plants) can have a wide range of impacts on aquatic ecosystems. There is increasing interest in establishing numeric nutrient criteria at the regional scale that reflect the geographic variability in the natural factors affecting in-stream nutrient conditions. The responses of aquatic life to nutrient enrichment, and the potential use of biological metrics as measures of water-quality status and biological condition, also are areas of active study.
