How Various Wavelengths of Light Affect the Growth of Different Algae Communities

Abstract

In this experiment, we chose to study the factors that impact algae growth and eventually lead to eutrophication in marine environments. After exposing water samples collected from different locations to both white and red light, our hypothesis that algae would show higher rates of growth under white light was not confirmed. Some algae samples showed increased rates of photosynthesis when exposed to white light (Chlorellaceae chlorella and Euglenaceae phacus from Theta Pond), but all other samples showed increased rates under red light. Since our algae represented different algae species from a number of locations, these results give valuable information as to which wavelengths of light have the greatest impacts to algae growth in certain local environments.