Marinji. (2023, August 5). Will this winter’s megastorms end the Bay Area’s toxic algae problem?
This article explores the possibility of droughts causing intense algal blooms. It discusses the possibility of rainfall lessening the stagnated water, and hopefully mitigating some of the blooms. The continuous droughts of the past six or so years have been a major problem, and could have been a cause of these extensive blooms. However, last year, we received plenty of rainfall, something this article does not account for. It does note that rainfall is not a permanent solution, due to the unpredictable weather conditions here.
This relates to environmental science because it shows how there could be many reasons for the same cause. We have to be vigilant to look for every reason there could be for something, and hopefully find a solution for it. This is because sometimes solutions are not permanent, like how the rainfalls will lessen algae blooms but could be followed up with a decade long drought. In this case, the rainfall provides temporary relief from the blooms, but algae thrives with warm weather that follows it. Additionally, rainfall might make the problem worse in the following month as more nitrogen fertilizer is washed out. A large part of environmental science is making sure that your solution won’t lead to more consequences and is actually beneficial.
This is a very interesting article. You mentioned that while helpful, rainfall is not a permanent solution. Are there any permanent solutions that we can easily implement?
Unfortunately, no. Currently, there are no easy and permanent solutions, and chances are that if there were it would still take a lengthy amount of time to go through and be approved to be implemented at a large scale.
I had no idea that the algae blooms were so important in the area! While rainfall can’t fix it, is there another type of technology that could be used so it isn’t dependent on only/parcially rainfall?
In smaller bodies of water, scientists were experimenting with a machine that introduced dissolved oxygen to the water. This may work for smaller bodies, but would be very expensive and unsustainable for larger ones. In terms of paths we should take to prevent these blooms from causing hypoxia in large bodies of water, it should be addressing the root cause of global warming and fertilizers, as opposed to difficult to implement, expensive technology.