Nitrogen Trackers
Nitrogen is quite literally all around us: 78 percent of Earth’s atmosphere is made up of nitrogen gas, and all living things include some form of nitrogen. It’s a necessary part of life, but as with most nutrients, too much of a good thing can quickly become a bad thing.
In Lake Erie, excess nitrogen can affect harmful algal blooms (HABs), from increasing the overall size of the bloom to making it produce more of the algal toxins that can affect human and wildlife health. Ohio Sea Grant researchers at Wright State University have been looking into these impacts for several years, and their results suggest that controlling HABs is about more than phosphorus runoff.