Pontius and undergraduate Stephen Aldrich '02 will be participating in a land use change modeling contest . Read here about the work Pontius and his colleagues, including graduate student Laura Schneider, have undertaken on the impact of land use change in Ipswich, Massachusetts, an area north of Boston. Pontius has obtained funding from the National Science Foundation to employ an undergraduate to work on the project in summer 2001. The problem Nitrates are chemicals that can regulate whether or not there is a healthy balance between plant and animal life in river systems and wetlands. Nitrates are necessary food for many kinds of plants, but when levels of nitrates are too high, a condition called eutrophication results.
Aquatic vegetation becomes too abundant and hinders aquatic animal life.
Nitrates are present in sewage and fertilizer, and thus soil in residential areas is likely to have a high level of nitrates. When rain washes soil from these areas into rivers and streams, the nitrate levels present in the water increase and result in eutrophication. As more and more forested land gets converted to residential use, it is likely that the level of nitrates in surrounding water systems will also increase. Pontius and his colleagues suspect that increasing levels of nitrates are likely to be a danger to the Ipswich River watershed in Massachusetts over the next century, where there is increasing pressure to convert forested land to residential use. The Ipswich River runs north of Boston, Massachusetts and flows into Plum Island Sound.