Nutrient cycling in the Columbia River Basin eutrophication in part due to the use of the river and its tributaries to irrigate over seven million acres of farmland, an extraction that comprises an average of 93 percent of daily water use in the basin. Natural run-off caused by precipitation and snowpack melt across agricultural lands further transports more of these nutrients into the river. In the late 1990s, the nitrogen load in the Columbia river was over twice the concentration historically observed. Forests are important terrestrial sinks for nutrients due to the ability of vegetation to sequester excess nutrients into their biomass. Additionally, plant roots stabilize soils
Jellyfish jellyfish are relatively better able to survive in warmer waters. Some jellyfish populations that have shown clear increases in the past few decades are invasive species, newly arrived from other habitats: examples include the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Baltic Sea, central and eastern Mediterranean, Hawaii, and tropical and subtropical parts of the West Atlantic (including the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Brazil). Increased nutrients from agricultural or urban runoff with nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus compounds increase the growth of phytoplankton, causing eutrophication and algal blooms. When the phytoplankton die, they may create dead zones, so called because they are