The increase of phosphorus since the mid 1990’s in the Maumee River watershed can be seen to have a strong correlation with the negative algal blooms in Lake Erie. With increased availability of this key nutrient, algae have the potential to grow at expedited rates and starve the other members of the biome of nutrients and oxygen, leading to uninhabitable waters, in addition to toxins produced by the algae having negative effects on human populations. Since the mid 1990’s, the use of glyphosate has also increased dramatically with heavy use in agriculture. It has been seen that glyphosate can bind onto the soil and desorb phosphorus, thus releasing this phosphorus into the watershed. Using soil samples from around the Maumee River watershed, the amount of phosphorus desorbed due to glyphosate application was extrapolated over northwest Ohio in order to ensure consistent trend with varying soils. From this, one can comment on how much of the phosphourus increase can be contributed to glyphosate application. It was determined that around half of the increase of the phosphorus load observed in the Lake Erie tributaries can be attributed to glyphosate application.

Glyphosate-induced phosphate desorption in the Maumee River watershed

251st National Meeting (2016)

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