Nutrients

Nutrient - "Element or compound essential for animal and plant growth. Common nutrients in fertilizer include nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium." - U.S. Geological Survey, 2007

Nutrients - "Major elements (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorus) and trace elements (including sulfur, potassium, calcium, and magnesium) that are essential for the growth of organisms. - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2009

Nutrients - "Nutrients are chemical elements that are essential to plant and animal nutrition. Nitrogen and phosphorus are nutrients that are important to aquatic life, but in high concentrations they can be contaminants in water. These nutrients occur in a variety of forms. Both are affected by chemical and biological processes that can change their form and can transfer them to or from water, soil, biological organisms, and the atmosphere." - Mueller and Helsel, 1996

Nutrients - "Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential for healthy plant and animal populations; however, elevated concentrations of these nutrients can degrade water quality ... Elevated nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in surface water can trigger eutrophication, resulting in excessive, often unsightly, growth of algae and other nuisance aquatic plants ... Excessive nutrient concentrations have been linked to hypoxic conditions, such as those found in the Gulf of Mexico, which can harm fish and shellfish that are economically and ecologically important to the Nation." - Fuhrer and others, 1999

Related Definitions

Eutrophication

Hypoxia

USGS Information on Nutrients

• Nutrients, Crosscutting Topic, Toxics Program
• Nitrate Remediation, Massachusetts Military Reservation, Cape Cod, MA
• Nutrients in the Nation's Waters--Too Much of a Good Thing?: USGS Circular 1136
• Nutrients National Synthesis Project, National Water-Quality Assessment Program
• Nutrients, South Florida Restoration Science Forum
• Water Quality: Nutrients and Sediment, Chesapeake Bay Activities
• Nutrient Enrichment and Criteria, National Water-Quality Assessment Program
• Phosphorus Plume Remediation, Toxics Program Remediation Activity
• Study and Interpretation of the Chemical Characteristics of Natural Water, Third Edition: USGS Water Supply Paper 2254
• Search the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program's Bibliography for "nutrients"

Related Headlines

• Measuring How Nitrogen Transforms in Groundwater
• Coatings on Sediment Grains Affect Nitrate Storage and Transport
• Algal Blooms Consistently Produce Complex Mixtures of Cyanotoxins and Co-Occur with Taste-and-Odor Causing Compounds in 23 Midwestern Lakes
• Phytoplankton in Coastal Waters and Global Climate Change?
• Handbook on Permeable Reactive Barriers Published, Handbook of groundwater remediation using permeable reactive barriers--Applications to radionuclides, trace metals, and nutrients
• New Information on the Long-Term Fate of Ammonium in Ground Water
• Nitrogen Isotope Study Answers Questions about the Transport of Nutrients in Streams
• New Report on Science for Hypoxia in Gulf of Mexico
• Phosphorus Doesn't Migrate in Ground Water? Better Think Again!
• USGS Info Guides Gulf of Mexico Hypoxic Zone Action Plan
• USGS Leads a National Study on Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, Flux and Sources of Nutrients in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin
• USGS Patents Bioreactors that Treat Nitrate and Methyl Bromide Contamination

Other Information on Nutrients

• Water Quality Criteria - Nutrients, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

References

Fuhrer, G.J., Gilliom, R.J., Hamilton, P.A., Morace, J.L., Nowell, L.H., Rinella, J.F., Stoner, J.D., and Wentz, D.A., 1999, A systematic approach to understanding nutrients and pesticides--National water-quality priorities and concerns: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1225, 84 p. 

Mueller, D.K., and Helsel, D.R., 1996, Nutrients in the Nation's waters--Too much of a good thing?: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1136, 24 p.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2009, Glossary of technical terms: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, access date July 30, 2010.

U.S. Geological Survey, 2007, Glossary--Nutrients: U.S. Geological Survey, access date July 30, 2010.