Andrew Zepp’s visit as a representative of the Finger Lakes Land Trust allowed me to learn a little bit more about the environment around us and how we affect it. Zepp’s explanation of the algae in the local lakes reminded me of the models we had explored in my BIOG 1500 class freshman year–adding too much of the nutrients found in common fertilizers caused populations to bloom and leave the ecosystem imbalanced.

The discussion took a new turn, however, when Zepp mentioned that it was hard to attribute all of the algae blooms in the lake to the fertilizer runoff of farmers in the region. It was possible that a large portion of it was due to some new kind of clam? fish? zebra clam? in the lake. This was new information to me, but it made sense. You can’t blame all the trouble on human activity when the animal activity could just as well be causing the imbalance. This just reasserted, in my mind, the importance of conducting studies regarding the environment and specific organisms’ affects.