Eutrophication phosphate into water is slow, hence the difficulty of reversing the effects of eutrophication. However, numerous literature report that nitrogen is the primary limiting nutrient for the accumulation of algal biomass. The sources of these excess phosphates are phosphates in detergent, industrial/domestic run-offs, and fertilizers. With the phasing out of phosphate-containing detergents in the 1970s, industrial/domestic run-off and agriculture have emerged as the dominant contributors to eutrophication. Cultural eutrophication is the process that speeds up natural eutrophication because of human activity. Due to clearing of land and building of towns and cities, land runoff is accelerated and more nutrients such
Agent-based model in biology beyond certain depths. The area of interest in the model was a lake in the Netherlands named Lake Veluwe. It is a relatively shallow lake with an average depth of 1.55 meters and covers about 30 square kilometers. The lake is under eutrophication stress which means that nutrients are not a limiting factor for either of the plant agents in the model. The initial position of the plant agents in the model was randomly determined. The model was implemented using Repast software package and was executed to simulate the growth and decay of the two different plant agents, taking into