Chemistry of Long Island Sound

The Long Island Sound (LIS), an estuary that borders Connecticut and New York, has been prone to nutrient pollution for decades, leading to significant hypoxia throughout the water. Water is deemed hypoxic when dissolved oxygen levels are measured to be below the 3mg/L threshold. The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) deployed several monitoring stations in the LIS to survey the nutrient concentrations (mg/L) from 1994 to 2017. We are looking specifically at nitrogen and phosphorus due to its known malignant effects on aquatic life and its direct association with hypoxia. Our research pertains to analyzing the general trend of nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and calculating the organic nutrient concentrations for them. The research is being conducted through data analysis with programs such as Excel, in which the current data is gathered and manipulated to see the underlying trends between the stations. We are manipulating the data so that calculations of organic nitrogen/phosphorus are shown. The results reveal that over the period of 23 years, the average amount of phosphorus measured is generally increasing, and the average amount of nitrogen measured is generally decreasing.