Fertilizer and sewage waste often emit large volumes of nitrate and phosphate into confined aquatic areas. These pollutants are also helpful nutrients that many living things can use. This can spur dramatic growth of algae or other aquatic organisms. Treatment of water to remove these pollutants is not possible everywhere so plants are a common method used to reduce pollutant levels.

In my project, I have focused on one plant Pontederia cordata, or Pickerel Rush, to test nitrate and phosphate absorption because this plant is native to both North and South America and it has been known to help reduce pollutants in pond environments. Because turbulence is a common difference between different aquatic environments and turbulence in water has helped bacteria uptake certain nutrients, I decided that I would test the ability of turbulence to enhance the ability of Pontederia Cordata to remove nutrients from water, I hypothesized that if the turbulence of nitrate and phosphate enhanced water in which Pontederia Cordata grows is increased; the nitrate and phosphates concentrations will decrease. I grew Pontederia Cordata plants in 16 L of water in aquarium tanks and added sodium nitrate and sodium phosphate to the water. I tested all the tanks for nitrate and phosphate with water testing kits. Then, I gave the plants varying levels of water turbulence with one of the tanks having no water flow, one having a 150 L/hour pump, and one having a 300 L/hour pump. I let the plants sit in the turbulence environment for 2 days until the end of the trial. Next, I tested water nitrate and phosphate levels in each tank afterward. The pumps were rotated between tanks so the impact of plant variability was reduced. With the concentration data before and after each trial, I was able to see how much nitrate and phosphate was removed by the plants with different amounts of turbulence. The average consumption of nitrate by the plants increased 47% when moving from no turbulence to 300 L/hour. This result was almost significant with a T - test p value of 0.0535 with a boundary of 0.05. For the phosphate, the plant was not effective at removing detectable amounts of phosphate therefore, further turbulence trials were not conducted with phosphate.

This experiment showed there may be a connection between the ability of a water plant to absorb nitrate and the movement of the water, Pontederia Cordata was a good option for nitrate reduction. More sensitive phosphate detection methods could be used with this plant to further investigate its ability to absorb phosphates. Nevertheless, this plant could be a good option for reducing nitrate levels in the Eastern parts of North and South America where it is native. There is research to suggest that nitrate is the most harmful pollutant in water from human activity. Further investigation on a larger scale or with different plants could be used to investigate factors that increase pollutant absorption by water plants.