Increasing emissions from motor vehicles, energy production and agriculture are causing more nitrogen to be deposited in remote lakes and watersheds in Colorado and around the world, directly affecting the life they contain. Although increased concentrations of nitrogen in alpine lakes from air pollution have been widely reported, two new studies published in Science and Ecology are the first to more completely document just how this increased nitrogen affects lake biology and food webs. The authors, including FORT research ecologist Jill Baron, found that in the presence of too much nitrogen, the algae at the base of the food web are of much poorer quality for zooplankton, the small swimming animals that eat them. These findings are important for those who manage water-quality issues in remote, low-nutrient lakes because they show that sustained increases in atmospheric nitrogen deposition may eventually influence the entire food web of these lakes, including fish. Studies in Colorado, Norway, and Sweden show that the nutrient status of lakes is disrupted in all three regions due to human-caused atmospheric nitrogen deposition.
Too Much of a Good Thing: Increasing Nitrogen Deposition in Lakes (podcast)
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