CURRENT SOLUTIONS
Pollution control and improved municipal, industrial, and agricultural practices could do much to curb the cultural eutrophication of inland and coastal waters.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation was founded in 1967 and aims to improve the bay’s water quality and curb pollution runoff.
The Baltic Sea has become the first “macro-region” targeted by the European Union to combat pollution, dead zones, overfishing, and regional disputes. The EU is coordinating the Baltic Sea Strategy with eight EU member countries that border the Baltic Sea: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden.
Scientists are categorizing eutrophic systems to better help them understand how to find solutions to fix the problem.
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415 total dead zones identified
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An area of concern is a coastal system that exhibits effects of eutrophication, such as elevated nutrient levels, harmful algal blooms, and negative changes in the benthic community. (233 total)
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A system in recovery is one that once exhibited low oxygen levels and hypoxia, but is now improving. (ex: Boston Harbor, only about 13 total in the world
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Restoring riparian zones is a possible solution. A riparian zone is a strip of land adjacent to a water body that is covered in foliage and acts as a buffer between the water body and the excess nutrients. Before the nutrients can reach the water, they are absorbed and filtered by the flora that protect the waterline. However, many riparian zones have been destroyed due construction of waterfront property or heavy erosion. This solution is efficient and feasible because it is relatively inexpensive, creates jobs, and restores natural habitats.
Better sewage treatments, reducing nitrogen emissions, and planting forests can help absorb excess nitrogen and phosphorus in different high risk areas.
Reducing nutrients will have a great effect as 68% of nutrients occur as a result of over fertilization. Farmers use more nutrients than the plant can even utilize, and irrigation systems help move those excess nutrients to unwanted places.
Although expensive and hard to use on larger bodies of water, ground bubblers have a high efficacy when it comes to restoring oxygen in small scale hypoxic zones. They are synthetic and can produce oxygen and dissolve it across a dead zone, similar to bubblers in fish tanks.
The best way to fix the issue of eutrophication is to prevent it in the first place. Dead Zones are irreversible, so governments must instate more laws regarding control of runoff for industrial plants and areas of cultivation.
We must act now in order to restore oligotrophic zones (high oxygen, low nutrients) and reduce hypoxic zones!
