Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics

When excess nutrients, particularly phosphorus, enter lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters through agricultural runoff and wastewater, they trigger eutrophication: a process that accelerates the growth of algae and cyanobacteria far beyond what a healthy ecosystem can sustain. The resulting harmful algal blooms can produce potent toxins that threaten drinking water supplies, kill fish, and pose serious risks to human and animal health. Researchers are working to understand how warming temperatures and altered precipitation patterns under climate change interact with nutrient loading to make blooms more frequent, more toxic, and harder to predict. Central open questions concern how aggressively phosphorus inputs must be reduced to reverse eutrophication in already-degraded systems, and whether nutrient control alone is sufficient when a changing climate is simultaneously shifting the conditions that favor cyanobacterial dominance.

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Keywords

EutrophicationHarmful Algal BloomsCyanobacteriaNutrient ControlClimate ChangeFreshwater Ecosystems