documents the deterioration of the lakes /ponds in your locality due to different human activities and suggest what measures can be taken to reduce the impact
Answers
Explanation:
The fact that lakes occupy such a small fraction of the landscape belies their importance as environmental systems and resources for human use. They are major recreational attractions for Americans. Sport fishing, swimming, and boating are highly popular pastimes, and lake-front property has a high economic value. Large lakes and reservoirs are used as drinking water supplies; the Great Lakes alone serve as the domestic water supply for approximately 24 million Americans, and many more Americans rely on man-made reservoirs and smaller lakes for their source of drinking water. Lakes are used by humans for many commercial purposes, including fishing, transportation, irrigation, industrial water supplies, and receiving waters for wastewater effluents. Aside from their importance for human use, lakes have intrinsic ecological and environmental values. They moderate temperatures and affect the climate of the surrounding land. They store water, thereby helping to regulate stream flow; recharge ground water aquifers; and moderate droughts. They provide habitat to aquatic and semiaquatic plants and animals, which in turn provide food for many terrestrial animals; and they add to the diversity of the landscape.
The myriad ways in which humans use lakes, along with the numerous pollutant-generating activities of society, have stressed lake ecosystems in diverse ways, frequently causing impairment of lake quality for other human uses. Stresses to lakes arise from each
identifiable point sources such as municipal and industrial wastewater, from nonpoint degradation, from urban and agricultural runoff within a lake's watershed, and from more insidious long-range atmospheric transport of contaminants. Major categories of stresses include excessive eutrophication from nutrient and organic matter loadings; siltation from inadequate erosion control in agricultural, construction, logging, and mining activities; introduction of exotic species; acidification from atmospheric sources and acid mine drainage; and contamination by toxic (or potentially toxic) metals such as mercury and organic compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides. In addition, physical changes at the land-lake interface (e.g., draining of riparian wetlands) and hydrologic manipulations (e.g., damming outlets to stabilize water levels) also have major impacts on the structure and functioning of lake ecosystems.
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