Excerpt
The recent public focus on Lake Erie harmful algal blooms (HABs) has pushed researchers, conservationists, and policy makers to attempt to isolate the cause(s) and the solution(s) to this problem. Previous reports indicated as many as 25 potential “causes” of the HABs (Smith et al. 2015c). More recently, researchers have placed further scrutiny on individual causes, such as tile drainage (King et al. 2015), fertilizer placement (Smith et al. 2016), fertility recommendations (Smith et al. 2018), or groups of these potential causes (Smith et al. 2015a; Jarvie et al. 2017; King et al. 2017; Smith et al. 2017; Williams et al. 2017).
One item that has yet to be addressed from the original list of causes is the influence of decreased sulfate (SO4) concentrations in rainfall and a concomitant increase in rainfall and soil pH (Smith et al. 2015c). Acid rain that resulted from power plant and other emissions was known to degrade aquatic and soil quality and damage structures in the 1970s and 1980s (Seaborn 1982; Helvey et al. 1982).
The 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act was enacted to address, among other things, acid rain (40 CFR C.50-97). Thus, flue-gas desulfurization has been adopted by power plants…
- © 2017 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
