Johnson s Seagrass And Its Effects - 1370 Words

Johnson’s Seagrass is a small, fragile seagrass that reproduces asexually. As a consequence, it’s range is limited to 200 kilometers in length of river mouths and tidal rivers off the coast of Florida, making it the seagrass with the most limited distribution in the world. It’s leaves are about 2-5 cm in length. This seagrass is tolerant of variations in salinity but is not tolerant of damage caused by human boating activities and actions including anchoring and dredging. This species of seagrass is so easily moved that it is uprooted by the turbidity caused from boat propellers. Halophila Johnsonii is also threatened by poor water quality including runoff and low oxygen levels. Johnson’s seagrass was declared a threatened species under†¦show more content†¦More specifically, â€Å"Important ecological and economic functions of seagrass beds have been widely acknowledged, notably their importance to fisheries and their role in preventing coastal erosion and siltation of coral reefs† (Erftemeijer and Lewis. 2006). Coral reefs are already disappearing at astonishing rates and siltation is even more detrimental to their survival. Since the number of acres of seagrass off the coast of Florida has decreased significantly in the past 65 years, it is especially concerning that Johnson’s seagrass reproduces asexually because â€Å" The plant has a reduced capacity to repopulate an area if lost due to human or environmental perturbations† (Johnson’s Seagrass Recovery Team, 12). The objective of this research is to determine whether or not Johnson’s seagrass endangerment is correlated to the amount of detrimental pollutants that humans are putting in aquatic ecosystems such as excess nitrates and oil from dredging. The critical prediction in this experiment is that as the concentration of a pollutant in the water Johnson’s seagrass grows in increases, the amount of growth decreases over time. The dry weight of the plant over time would decrease when grown in polluted water when comparing the dry weight of the plant when grown in clean water. The Flint River located in western Georgia is quite unpolluted and will be fit to reproduce these clean water conditions in the laboratory.