Water is synonymous with life. And just as people often taken life for granted, a precarious situation exists in that the people of America often take water resources for granted. Today, people share Earth with over 6.3 billion other people, 292 million of those people living in the United States of America. The human population continues to rise, while the available freshwater continues to decline. The quality of many bodies of freshwater is deteriorating everyday. In an era of urban sprawl and intensive agriculture, respect for this life-supporting liquid and its surrounding shorelines is often an overlooked concern.

In Lake Macatawa, located in Holland, Michigan, phosphorus levels are extremely high, leading to periodic algal blooms, according to a 1999 Michigan Department of Environmental Quality report. A lake that is hypereutrophic, meaning it suffers from this condition of excess nutrients, causes a high density of algae that can result in hypoxia, or extremely low dissolved oxygen levels. The same thing is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a “dead zone,” in which marine life cannot survive.

Humans can impact aquatic systems physically, chemically and biologically. In a crunch for space and a desire to be near water, people build to the very edges of rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands, often disregarding the potential effects it could have on wildlife habitat and on the aquatic habitats themselves. Often, logging companies remove timber to the very edge of aquatic systems, ignoring the potential for erosion, stream degradation, and ultimate ecosystem catastrophe. One of the most profound problems involves excess nutrients running off into freshwaters, either from direct or indirect sources. Most commonly, fertilization of crops or by-products of livestock are responsible for these nutrients, specifically phosphorus and nitrogen.

Another threat to aquatic ecosystems is dam building. Large dams, for example, can take a toll on native fish populations. One way to ensure fish migratory routes around dams, however, is with the building of fish ladders.

Traditionally, resource management is concentrated on one goal, that goal being to maximize production of goods and services for human use. Today, management has taken on a new perspective, known as ecosystem management. The goal of ecosystem management is to maintain ecosystem integrity by balancing these human demands with other goals that are specific to the ecosystem, such as maintaining native species.