Farm land run off

Transcript

DR CANDIDA SAVAGE
To try and promote intensive farming practices, we fertilise more than we require on the fields, and so there is some left-over nutrients that can then carry into water sources, into streams and eventually downstream into estuaries. What it does is it promotes growth of the plants, of the seaweeds and of the algae. And so a little bit of enhanced nutrients can be good, and we see improved growth of several organisms, but if you have too much of that, it can start causing negative effects, and there are some threshold levels beyond which certain estuaries can't cope with that increased nutrient loading.