PREP Reports & Publications

Abstract

Nitrogen is most often considered to be the limiting nutrient for plant growth in marine waters. As a result, knowledge of nitrogen loading and ambient water-column concentrations are considered to be critical to understanding the response of aquatic ecosystems to nutrient over-enrichment—a process known as eutrophication when it results in the excess production of organic matter.

Plant production in many estuarine systems may also be limited by light availability as a result of high levels of turbidity in the water resulting from sediments, dissolved organic matter, and phytoplankton in the water column. Light limitation resulting from human-induced increases in turbidity is known to be particularly deliterious to seagrass production/distribution in some ecosystems and also play an important role in determining how phytoplankton respond to nutrient enrichment.

EPA is developing water qulaity criteria for estuaries that require knowledge of both total nitrogen and light availability (measured as photsynthetically active radiation, PAR). Through the National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) System-Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP), inorganic nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll-a concetration, and a number of hydrographic and water quality parameters are sampled on a monthly basis at 7 sites in the Great Bay system.

This project takes advantage of these existing monitoring activities to collect and analyze for particulate organic nitrogen (PON), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) at existing sample sites in the New Hampshire seacoast region. When combined with existing dissolved inorganic nitrogen measurements, PON and DON allow the entire Total Nitrogen (TN) pool to be quantified. PAR measurements provide an estimate of the light availability in the system.

Department

Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership

Publication Date

3-31-2007

Publisher

New Hampshire Estuaries Project

Document Type

Report

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