Scientists Solve Riddle of Toxic Algae Blooms 237
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the Victoria Times Colonist: "After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world." Punchline: "Phosphorus."
Irony! (Score:5, Interesting)
This week's lesson: this discovery comes not long after phosphorus was eliminated from most household laundry detergents by federal law.
According to a chemistry major I know, adding one gram or so of phosphorus can cause more devastating algae ownage than adding two or three kilograms of carbon.
Re:Who knew (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this a plague?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Harvest the stuff. Make fuel out of it. It's way better than using corn. You're throwing away free gas...ok diesel.
Re:Why is this a plague?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but we can grow more efficient hydrocarbon eating algae in isolated raceway ponds in the desert where they will have no effect on other organisms. The type of algae being produced in these dead zones is no where near as efficient in the bio diesel production loop.
In addition, using these highly specialized algae as an emissions filter for coal fed power plants can have a huge effect on existing power production emissions with out running the risks or costs associated with converting to a different source of centralized power.
-Rick
"Life's Bottleneck" (Score:5, Interesting)
In it the Gentle Doctor argued that phosphorous has the greatest relative concentration increase going from its abundance in the natural environment to that in life of all sorts. It thus was often the limit to growth of life as it was scavenged up and held in the biomass.
It's always important to confirm by testing in specific cases, as with this one, as there are other limits, such as dissolved iron. I can't remember where, but I recently read that low blood iron may be a defensive mechanism to make it hard for bacteria to grow during some infections--and that treating the low iron may be the wrong treatment here.
Interesting life cycle (Score:4, Interesting)
Algae growth can literally FILL a lake in just a few years, in fact this is part of the natural cycle for small lakes, which as they silt up and the water warms up, will fill first to algae beds, then to marsh, and finally to meadow; once started, the entire process can take as little as ten years
Rich snots find pleasant lake and build waterfront mansions around it. Being rich, they insist upon maintaining a couple of acres of putting green quality lawn around them. [This I know, since I live on such a lake, but my 'yard' is basically wild. Whatever grows there unfertilized naturally. The rich snots hate me for not having a nice green lawn.] Eventually, their fertilizer will plug up the lake, turning it into a marsh. Their property values will plummet and they'll all move out.
Re:So is there fertilizer without Phosphorus? (Score:2, Interesting)
the type of algae involved with most toxic blooms in freshwater systems (and is the cause of many marine and estruary blooms as well) is mostly cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which is certainly not a plant.
Phosphorous from fertilizer is the really big problem from farm run-off as a lot of the rest of the run-off elements/chemicals are naturally at higher concentrations in the water to begin than is the case with P. Normally there is almost no dissolved P left floating around free in an aquatic system. P is scavenged like crazy in aquatic systems is one of the main factors limiting overall biomass of the system.
Really this article is a nice PR piece but we still don't know what causes harmless blooms to turn toxic. Harmless blooms aren't bad really, they just are inconvenient to us humans. They feed higher lifeforms and up the chain to the fish we eat (now overfish and we end up with food chain issues which cause blooms to stick around longer). The toxic blooms are the problem and we aren't really closer to finding what triggers their toxin production. We still just know what causes algal growth in the first place. Which we've had a firm grasp on for a long time now (thanks to this same research center)
Re:Irony! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Irony! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also the true discovery, according to the article, is that nitrogen actually works against the process (in that controlling the amount of nitrogen that went into the lake actually caused more damage). This goes against the current trend of thinking that the two (phosphorus and nitrogen) were working in conjunction.
Re:What?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. I thought this connection was know since way back.
At least, the news have talked about how the phosphor-pollution of the Baltic Sea causes algae blooms for many years here in Sweden...
Or maybe this has been in the "It's only an extremely likely connection. It hasn't been 100% proven." section before. =)
Hmm... Fun trivia:
The Swedish wikipedia-page about the Baltic Sea has a section about how phosphor and nitrogen from fertilizer has caused algae blooms and oxygen-deprived bottom environments there since the late 90's.
The English version has a lot more information over all but does not mention this at all, except for a picture with the caption "Phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic" with no further explanation. =)
Re:What?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
That was my initial response but from the article it seems the real discovery wasn't phosphorous induces plant growth.
The real discovery was that nitrogen removal methods in already damaged waters actually exacerbates the problem. Somewhat profound since it appears the common method to fight blooms is to try and reduce nitrogen.
Belthize
Re:Funny you should say that.... (Score:4, Interesting)
First you have to separate the bloom from the water, then you have to separate the algae from all the other gunk skimmed with it, then you have to separate the triglyceride bits from the non triglyceride bits. Then you hope that the oil fractions of the particular species are high enough to make it worth your while.
All of these things can be done, but often they require more energy than is in the oil.