What Is The Impact Of Lake Ellesmere's Negative Impact On Water Quality

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Area around Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere has significant negative impacts on water quality. From dairy farming to human activities, the causes of poor water are soaring. As a result, animal controlling, irrigating, and cleaning up are some of the best methods of how to solve the problems. First of all, keeping cows and sheep away from water source is one way to minimize the nitrogen leaching into the groundwater and lake. How luck the Lake Ellesmere is when the surrounding city is not New York or Tokyo. However, since the urban pollution is not a major, agriculture pollution is rather a severe one. The suitable land for dairy farming causes a large number of sheep and cows around the lake, nearly 15 thousand (Hughey, Johnston, Lomax, & Taylor, 2013). The impact of sheep’s waste to the water source is relatively low while the amount of nitrogen leaching by cows is too massive to ignore. Methane gas from cows is a major pollutant to both water and …show more content…

The water bed is sticking out due to the population around the lake continuously enhance. This is one reason why the lake water is not very clear. The Lake Ellesmere is too shallow that decreased from five meters at pre-Europeans time to two meters right now. Not only the depth, but also the size was as twice as now (Selwyn, n.d.). The decreased area was mainly for agricultural purpose. Luckily, in order to protect this very special resource as Maori taonga, local control exercise lake control by digging a trench for a long time. Opening the lake is a good way of catching eels or other fish (Selwyn, n.d.). Consequently, it is good that it allows discharging waste and gaining highly nutrients. Moreover, the movements of young eels and other fish are easier when the water reaches the sea level (ChristchurchCItyLibraries, n.d.). As a result, irrigating reduces the brackish water and increases the