text: Phosphorus compounds are usually found as relatively insoluble phosphates in river water and, except in some exceptional circumstances, their origin is agriculture or human sewage. Phosphorus can encourage excessive growths of plants and algae and contribute to eutrophication. If a river discharges into a lake or reservoir phosphate can be mobilised year after year by natural processes. In the summer time, lakes stratify so that warm oxygen rich water floats on top of cold oxygen poor water. In the warm upper layers - the epilimnion- plants consume the available phosphate. As the plants die in the late summer they fall into the cool water layers underneath - the hypolimnion - and decompose. During winter turn-over, when a lake becomes fully mixed through the action of winds on a cooling body of water - the phosphates are spread throughout the lake again to feed a new generation of plants. This process is one of the principal causes of persistent algal blooms at some lakes.