What eutrophication is :

"Eutrophication is the process of excessive nutrient enrichment of waters that typically results in problems associated with macrophyte, algal or cyanobacterial growth" - NEMP implementation manual.

The state of eutrophication in South Africa :

Many South African impoundments exhibit high nutrient enrichment with consequent eutrophication related problems. Eutrophication monitoring information is available for more than 80 impoundments in South Africa. However, many impoundments do not have regular eutrophication monitoring programmes, and the main aim of the NEMP is to fulfil this requirement.

While not an environmental resource management programme in itself, the NEMP provides information for supporting a strategy to control eutrophication in South Africa (Walmsley, 2003).

NEMP products

The NEMP provides periodic assessments of eutrophication in South Africa:

• Web-based reports
  • [Six-monthly summer and winter reports]
  • Automatically generated depth-time plots in a table
  • Automatically generated depth-time plots in Google Earth
  • R scripts that generate the web reports
• [2003 state of eutrophication table: Archive document]
• [2003 state of eutrophication report: Archive document]
• The Cyanolakes website has a series of chlorophyll a and cyanobacterial analyses, partly for a retrospective study using the European Space Agency MERIS sensor, which was active from 2002 to 2012. Information from the European Space Agency's Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) became available in 2017, and is also visible on the Cyanolakes site. *Starting in September 2018, the information on the site became restricted because of funding constraints.

References

• Publications
• Reports and implementation documents
• Easy identification of aquatic plants
• Easy identification of freshwater algae
• Introduction to cyanobacteria
• Cyanobacteria information brochure: Archive document

Contacts

Acknowledgements

The success of the NEMP is not only dependent on the efforts of Resource Quality Monitoring sub-directorate, but the support of many other groups and individuals. The Resource Quality Information sub-directorate does scheduling, consolidation of sample reception, database development, data administration and data visualisation. The Analytical Services sub-directorate conducts all analyses for the samples arriving at RQIS. Many Water Control Officers, Regional offices and other local stakeholders assist with the vast number of samples not collected by RQIS technical staff.

History

The NEMP originates from the former Trophic Status Project, which aimed at monitoring seven catchments, selected because of their high nutrient export load. Implementation of NEMP began in 2002 and it monitors sites throughout South Africa, providing reports on trophic status and related problems, including algal growth, cyanobacterial blooms and excessive water plant growth.