Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics

When excess nutrients—primarily phosphorus from agricultural runoff, sewage, and urban drainage—accumulate in lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters, they trigger eutrophication, a process that fundamentally reshapes aquatic ecosystems by fueling explosive growth of microscopic algae. Under these enriched conditions, cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic bacteria commonly called blue-green algae, frequently come to dominate, forming harmful algal blooms that deplete oxygen, block sunlight, and release potent toxins capable of killing wildlife and threatening human drinking water supplies. Researchers are working to understand how rising water temperatures and altered precipitation patterns driven by climate change interact with nutrient loading to make blooms more frequent, longer-lasting, and harder to predict. A central open question is how aggressively phosphorus must be reduced—and through which combination of watershed management, in-lake interventions, and policy—to reliably suppress blooms in systems where legacy nutrients locked in sediments continue to fuel algal growth long after external inputs are controlled.

Works

202,680

Total citations

1,916,410

Keywords

EutrophicationHarmful Algal BloomsCyanobacteriaNutrient ControlClimate ChangeFreshwater Ecosystems