Talk:Eutrophication/Archive 4

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Under the subheading Ocean Waters there is a single sentence about the hypoxic coastal zones which is presented with no context or explanation. In order to improve the flow of the article, this sentence should be elaborated on, or moved to another paragraph where it is more relevant. Kthay1197 (talk) 23:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia page defines eutrophication as 'when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which induce excessive growth of plants and algae' and while this is the most common short-hand definition for eutrophication, the technical definition, as originally defined by Nixon, 1995 is 'an increase in the rate of supply of organic matter to an ecosystem'. The most common form of eutrophication is excess plant and algal growth due to inorganic nutrients, but Nixon's definition leaves open the possibility eutrophication arising from increases in organic matter more generally (i.e., increase in terrestrial organic matter flushed into the system). I'm curious to hear other's thoughts on updating this article to include the more general definition of eutrophication or whether this definition is 'too technical' and for all intents and purposes the current definition is sufficient. Aghounshell (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. This 1970 article supports a more general definition, mentioning: "...eutrophication with the addition of organic matter...". In my work I witness carbon/organic matter/BOD causing fish kills in a way that I recognise as eutrophication although it is not discussed as such. Like this extreme example. The BOD in landfill leachate, leachate from accumulated biomass (wood waste, ag waste, animal waste, accumulated storm blowdown) and compost operations, failed septic drain fields, and from animal waste lagoons inundated during storm events: these all contribute organic carbon in a reactive form that contributes to eutrophication in water bodies. -- Paleorthid (talk) 21:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

This looks like just a common English issue....where the same word is used for heading towards and arriving at a condition. Like "stagnate" can mean both "starting to stagnate" and "arrive at stagnation". North8000 (talk) 21:13, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Supporting sources: "Eutrophication and poor water quality are inevitably linked to excessive amounts of organic loading. ... The connection between eutrophication and organic loading was first realized in the 1870s by engineers in London". Source: Lowe (2005) Eutrophication and Organic Loading

The overload of nitrogen, phosphorus and other organic material can result in a series of 'side effects'. The main effects of eutrophication are:... Source: Science for the Public - What is Eutrophication?

Extensive lecture notes on the subject: "If the waste has very high BOD, the river can go eutrophic." Source: Lecture 10: Nutrient and BOD Overloading in Fresh Waters -- Paleorthid (talk) 21:59, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi All,

Could anybody clarifies the difference between Eutrophication (d:Q156698) and Nutrient pollution (d:Q12203192)?

It seem that these two article are describing a same phenomenon. Many Thanks!

-- @assanges ‧ ^{talk | cont | uploads} 12:55, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Well, a common meaning of "pollution" generally refers to human-caused, and would encompass the act of polluting. But there is a lot of overlap. North8000 (talk) 15:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The confusion arises because the introduction of pollutants is by far the most common cause of eutrophication. In the absence of a human population, eutrophication is a natural, and often very slow process in which water bodies become enriched with nutrients, particularly phosphates, from the degradation of rocks and soils by normal geomorphological processes. Sterile lakes slowly evolve into biologically dynamic lakes and then to swamps and finally marshes and damp grassland and woods. Human activities have converted a process often taking aeons into one which takes a few decades and in that framework the two appear to be synonymous. Perhaps the simpler answer is the eutrophication describes a change in the trophic state and pollution refers to an ongoing or past activity.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   20:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

All true. Upon closer look, I think that the Nutrient pollution sticks to the topic pretty well. Not that the question was specifically asked, but I don't think that they should be merged. North8000 (talk) 21:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Woah there horsey! This beautiful table was added recently, but when checking the source (see Supplementary Materials), I can't find the numbers cited in it at all! For one, according to the source fish farming is by far the worst cause of eutrophication, over 5x worse than beef production, which makes sense. The editor @RockingGeo is apparently a very productively editing vegan who is adding information to all the animal husbandry articles to convince people tofu & plant-based milk substitutes are a lot more environmentally friendly than meat production -no argument there, but I do object to falsifying data. Yikes, just looked at his/her talk page instead of his/her edits, seems this is not isolated. Guess I must over all recent edits...? Cheers, Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 09:56, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Good move. Also, it should be an informative article, not a soapbox. North8000 (talk) 11:42, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Idiot text removed for further study Leo Breman (talk) 12:36, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I am a prick! Looks like the numbers are there, just the wrong ones for beef! Downloaded the old table, stupid me! Eh, will go over everything carefully again. Will remove the slander above! Leo Breman (talk) 13:33, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

This article has been chosen for monitoring and improvement by the Stockholm Environment Institute SDG 14 project (see here). We are monitoring improvements during the period August 2020 to July 2022 using a scoring tool devised of both automated and expert evaluation. The score for the entire article on Aug 26, 2020 (carried out 11 Feb 2021) was 62.5/100. For the lead it was 29.4/100. Advice to improve this article: The lead should be lengthened and improved to better reflect the content of the article. Illustrations could be improved with better examples of eutrophication. The lead image doesn't look like a typical algal bloom with biological material - this one looks like green dye discharged into a small stream. ASRASR (talk) 16:16, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that observation on the image. Overall what is needed is people to work on the article.North8000 (talk) 20:03, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

just to close the loop: I think the image in the lead has now been replaced. This image here (on the left) is the old image from 11 Feb. @ASRASR please comment if you are happy with the new image for the lead? EMsmile (talk) 03:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I have remove a section headed "Sources of high nutrient runoff" and added it unchanged to Nutrient pollution where it was a much better fit. This history of that section is retained here for reference.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   23:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Velella. Overall, I think we need to look carefully at both articles and ensure they don't overlap too much. I am wondering if you have already done that? At first sight it seems to me that there is still overlap. And the article on "nutrient pollution" is too US centric, like you have pointed out there already. EMsmile (talk) 03:51, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile - No I haven't done any sort of through review, but I can work through it with a view to more clearly separating the topics but still leaving enough common ground to avoid the need to frequently switch between articles to get a comprehensive view. This is one area where I ought to be able to help. My post-grad qualification is in Applied Hydrobiology done in association with the FBA at Windermere. Just in a very quick review, I have some serious issues about Cultural eutrophication which duplicates some of the content here, but adds very little else and has a horribly captioned image in the lede. I think that this is an unneeded fork and should be a redirect here. All but one of the refs are simply about Eutrophication. I will start a better analysis when I have a little more time - I have been distracted lately with a CFD which is not going well, which kind of drains enthusiasm.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   16:31, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Great, looking forward to that! I hadn't yet looked at Cultural eutrophication (hadn't even heard this term before; my background is on eutrophication due to sewage (treated or untreated) in surface waters). I see there is an old merger discussion kicking around there, started in 2010.... EMsmile (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

IMO structurally, the wording on this article should be tweaked a bit to eliminate wording that seems to confine the term to conversion of entire bodies of water. For example, change to a definition which clearly encompasses localized effects in oceans. (yes, I know that the content part of the article is already that broad) Once that is done IMO the nutrient pollution topic 95% becomes a subset of this article. The other 5% could be covered by expanding this article a bit to include full-ocean effects which are proportionately too small to be treated as a "conversion" of the entire body of water. Then we could merge the nutrient pollution article into this one. IMO Wikipedia certainly need to have/retain an "Eutrophication" article. North8000 (talk) 13:24, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Are you referring to the first sentence, User:North8000?: "Eutrophication (from Greek eutrophos, "well-nourished") is a limnological term for the process by which a body of water becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients." If so, I would agree with you. Can we change it to "Eutrophication (from Greek eutrophos, "well-nourished") is a limnological term for the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients." (or is there anything in the literature that speaks against it?) EMsmile (talk) 01:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Looks good. That's the one I meant. North8000 (talk) 02:35, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I've just merged the content of "cultural eutrophication" to here, as per the talk page consensus on that page. It still needs further work now to streamline and to remove any repetition that was introduced. EMsmile (talk) 13:05, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Good move North8000 (talk) 13:45, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

I've just spent a few hours restructuring the article. My focus was to give it a better logical flow and to reduce repetition which was partly introduced by that earlier merger of "cultural eutrophication" to here. I tried to group together the content about sewage treatment which was spread over several sections (I also removed a paragraph about sewage treatment, sludge incineration and anaerobic treatment which had been added by a student editor in May 2020 to the "cultural eutrophication" article but was rather off-topic and poorly referenced). I am still concerned about potential overlap with nutrient pollution in particular for the section on "prevention and reversal" which is in both articles. It needs to be strengthened here and it should be ensured that the two articles fit together nicely like a puzzle piece. EMsmile (talk) 05:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Took a quick look.....looks like nice work! BTW some overlap in articles is normal. We mostly just try to reduce it. North8000 (talk) 10:59, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, North8000, appreciate your feedback. A little bit of overlap is OK yes, but if the same paragraphs appear in two articles, then I think the excerpt function would be the way to go. This way, content would only have to be maintained/updated in one place, not in two. - By the way, I came across this free textbook today which has a good chapter on eutrophication.^[1]: 131 So if anyone is keen to help, you could take some information from that book. EMsmile (talk) 04:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Timng418.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 October 2021 and 9 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sunnydayreading.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)