River Talks: Downstream Impacts from Inland Streams

Many of our actions on land have the effect of mobilizing nutrients (the chemicals nitrogen and phosphorus) to streams and rivers, which in turn has caused nutrient pollution and eutrophication in surface waters worldwide.  The most severe environmental impacts are often to lakes and coastal waters that are hundreds of miles downstream from the source of the pollution.  Nutrients carried by streams in the Cumberland River Basin contribute to impacts in an area of the Gulf of Mexico known as the “dead zone.”

In this talk Anne will describe a tool developed by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey that tracks the nutrient load reaching the coast back up to the headwater streams and watersheds where it originates. Plus, the tool identifies which types of activities are the major contributors to help prioritize our own watershed actions.