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The Algae Problem In The Chesapeake Bay

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The Algae Problem In The Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake bay is having problems with recent algal blooms. This paper will discuss the roles of the organisms in the partial chesapeake bay food chain, The possible effects of a decrease in the algae population on the plant and animal populations, What the causes of this problem is, what is being done to fix it, and what else could be done.
Algae is a floating plant on top of the water; that is at the bottom of the food chain. This plant has no roots, and floats freely about the water. According to , http://www.chesapeakebay.net/blog/post/the_abcs_of_habs_how_harmful_algal_blooms_impact_the_bay. Recently Chesapeake bay is experiencing H,A,B,s which is short for algae blooms. These algae blooms cause many problems for the habitat for other …show more content…
This seems to all lead back to runoff, The causes of the blooms are excess nitrogen, and phosphorus. This is like steroids for these microorganism. What it does is it brings the population of the algae up to a certain extent , then it crashes due to the fact that there is no more nutrients. It seems that the nitrogen, and phosphorus is coming from farm fields, and fertilisation. This happens when there is a major rain storm which picks up all of the fertilizer, garbage, and other harmful substances that cause this problem. Roads act as slides for these harmfull pollutants that all seem to lead straight to the waterways. This can be a huge problem because the more urbanisation and building that an area can go through there will be less land to suak up the harmful and destructive types algae. These blooms really screw up the water quality of chesapeake bay, they end up consuming almost all of the oxygen until there isn't any and then everything dies. This is obviously a huge problem. No body know how long that water body will withstand these torturous and extreme die offs, and blooms. According to http://www.chesapeakebay.net/blog/post/the_abcs_of_habs_how_harmful_algal_blooms_impact_the_bay residents are currently trying to drive less, upgradeing septic systems, picking up pet waste, and not useing fertilizerser on there …show more content…
Another measure that would help is to increase water flow. This would be truly difficult in chesapeake bay due to the size, but in my opinion the approach towards the sources of runoff would be more promising. On the other hand if you where to place pumps that cycled the water in and out in large fertile areas this could minimise the amount of algae that is present in the
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