Nitrogen is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, so it can be hard to find, but with the right tools nitrogen can be measured easily. Nitrogen is an essential part of plant and animal life. Nitrogen plays a big role in all parts of the environment. This page is about the effect that nitrogen has on water, and everything that surrounds a certain water source. The eutrophication process is an aging process for water.
Excess nitrogen promotes excess algal growth, resulting in cultural eutrophication.
Eutrophication is a natural process, but too much phosphate or nitrate can make a water source age more rapidly than it should. The same happens to all plants and animals, everything ages and eventually dies, but certain things can happen to make a plant or animal age faster than it should. If too much nitrogen enters a water source it will become polluted and eventually lead to eutrophication. Agriculture is the major source of the pollutants in a water source because of the fertilizer runoff and livestock waste. If a major nitrogen problem occurs, it is hard to determine where the start of a problem is because nitrogen runs off of large areas of land into streams, then creeks, and then rivers.