Total Phosphorus

1
Total Phosphorus

• By Diana Dominguez
• Jen Brown
• Bron Byers

2
Phosphorus

• Key element for growth of both plants and animals
• Exist in
• Particles
• Loose fragments
• Bodies of aquatic organisms

3
Testing For Phosphorus

• Collecting samples from sites
• Analyzing the data in the lab
• Graph Results

4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
Range

• 0-0.014 Excellent
• 0.015-0.039 Good
• 0.04-0.085 Fair
• 0.086-0.2 Poor
• Less PO4 is better (Zero) for the streams
• More PO4 is worse for the streams

7
How PO4 affects our H2O Quality

• Good indicator for the amount of nutrients in
  the water
• Bonds well with soil particles
• The amount of rainfall significantly alters
  Phosphoric concentration
• In limited quantities it stimulates vegetative
  growth
• In excess it will cause over growth of plants
• Life cycles are completed in a shorter amount of
  time
• This is a huge problem (eutrophication)

8
Trends

• Weather Conditions
• Drought (Past)
• Lots of Rain (PO4 downstream)
• Other Factors that are associated with PO4
  Levels
• Increase/decrease of pH, DO, Temperature and
  macroinvertebrates

9
Land use and Water Quality

• Fertilizer use in agriculture, residential,
  commercial, and urban areas
• Construction
• Run-off from roads

10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
Recommendations

• Regulating the amount of fertilizer, having
  warning labels, making smaller bags (soil
  testing)
• Putting up/ repairing the silt barriers
• Buffer such as vegetation (allows PO4 to bond
  longer in the soil and not run down the stream)
• Hydro seed (Tackifier)
• Test above and below the currently tested sites