I’m a googler and was googling through interwebs when I came across this Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_2n_WBvcdI">Piss_Poor
And it made me think about the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone. I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper and understand its causes and some things that we can do to prevent or lessen Eutrophication.
eutrophication
noun
excessive nutrients in a lake or other body of water, usually caused by runoff of nutrients (animal waste, fertilizers, sewage) from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life; the decomposition of the plants depletes the supply of oxygen, leading to the death of animal life; "he argued that the controlling factor in eutrophication is not nitrate but phosphate" In the natural world, nutrients are constantly recycled. Nothing goes to waste.
BioGeoChemical Cycles.
We have already seen that while energy does not cycle through an ecosystem, chemicals do. The inorganic nutrients cycle through more than the organisms, however, they also enter into the atmosphere, the oceans, and even rocks. Since these chemicals cycle through both the biological and the geological world, we call the overall cycles biogeochemical cycles. Each chemical has its own unique cycle, but all of the cycles do have some things in common. Reservoirs are those parts of the cycle where the chemical is held in large quantities for long periods of time. In exchange pools, on the other hand, the chemical is held for only a short time. The length of time a chemical is held in an exchange pool or a reservoir is termed its residence time.
http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/102/ecosystem.html#BioGeoChemicalCycles8 However, modern agriculture has broken this natural cycle. When crops are removed and fed to animals, including us, nutrients necessary for healthy plant life are removed from the field. The only way to maintain production is to replace the lost nutrients. Unfortunately, this is done with man made fertilizers.
Well, what happened to the original nutrients? They eventually get excreted, or return to the environment through death. It all ends up back in the environment....All of it. All of these nutrients add up and create
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/">numerus dead zones around the world.
The whole stinking mess is KOYAANISQATSI!!!...Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance."
Is it possible to mend the nutrient cycle? I have a dying fig tree I planted six weeks ago. I have peed on it while watering several times and it has sprung back to life!
Controlling Water Pollution By Isolating UrineAlthough urine makes up only 1% of the total volume of wastewater, it accounts for 50–80% of the nutrient content. Nutrients have to be removed by resource-intensive processes at wastewater treatment plants. In the absence of these processes, nutrient discharges pose a risk of eutrophication – threatening in particular coastal waters and fish stocks. Many problematic substances, such as residues of medicines or endocrine disrupters, also enter wastewater via urine and may subsequently be released into the environment.
Novaquatis tested various methods of processing urine. Ideally, treatment should permit recycling of nutrients as fertilizers and, at the same time, removal of problematic micropollutants. For example, 98% of the phosphorus in urine can be recovered by precipitation with magnesium. The product – struvite – is an attractive fertilizer, free of pharmaceuticals and hormones. In Switzerland, nutrients from human urine could serve as substitutes for at least 37% of the nitrogen and 20% of the phosphorus demand that is currently met by imported artificial fertilizers.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308085444.htm Flush-Free FertilizerNutrients in a person's urine depend on what she or he has eaten. Analyses of urine used in the new experiments, however, show it contained amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium that were similar to concentrations of those nutrients found in commercial fertilizer.
According to the team's calculations, urine collected from one person throughout a year could fertilize a 90-square meter (970-square foot) plot of soil. More than 160 cabbages could grow in that space.
Compared to a plot treated with conventional fertilizer, a pee-treated plot could grow 64 kilograms (140 pounds) more cabbage, the researchers say. Compared to an untreated plot, the urine-treated plot could yield 256 kg (564 pounds) more cabbage.
Earlier this year, the same team reported that cucumbers also grow better with human urine than with conventional fertilizer.
The power of human pee to grow crops is only just being realized. Next time you flush, imagine the possibilities!—Emily Sohn
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20071010/Note3.asp More Youtube stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZQdGvpok3Y&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkHi7cswbtc