The Relationships between Chemical Measures and Potential Predictors of the Eutrophication Status of Inlets

Measurements of nutrients, dissolved oxygen and trace metals in bottom waters, taken just before the fall turnover, have been evaluated as indicators of eutrophication in inlets. Samples for these analyses were collected in 34 inlets in eastern Canada. The dominant factor (31% of the variance of the dataset) from a principal component analysis of the resulting data was clearly related to eutrophication. This factor included phosphate, ammonia, silicate, dissolved oxygen, iron and manganese, but not cadmium and zinc. It was used to rank inlets according to eutrophication. Comparisons of these rankings with measures of inlet shape revealed that several measures of the significance of sills were good predictors of the eutrophication status. Tidal prism flushing times, and other geometric measures, were poor predictors of eutrophication. Measures of anthropogenic inputs to the inlets were also poor predictors of the eutrophication status: apparently natural processes dominate anthropogenic inputs in these inlets.