This increased carbon serves as an inexpensive and continuous source of carbon necessary for biologic nutrient removal.

Crop Nutrient Tool - The Crop Nutrient Uptake Tool provides estimates of nutrient removal by crops at various levels, such as the farm, conservation district, and watershed level.

The water quality restoration and protection section states that the program plans on involving aid from stormwater management, upgrading wastewater treatment plants to biological nutrient removal, upgrading managing sewage systems, and developing tributary strategies for each basin.

The New York City concern of Hazen & Sawyer will test biological nutrient removal at the Mamaroneck Wastewater Treatment Plant to determine which technologies will best improve the purification process.

The reason is that much of the nitrogen pollution comes from non-point sources in agriculture, and the still insufficient nutrient removal by wastewater treatment plants.

In September 2003, a first extensive pilot plant research was executed at STP Ede, the Netherlands with focus on obtaining stable granulation and biological nutrient removal.

Many existing plants are being expanded and upgraded to include a tertiary treatment stage for nutrient removal to comply with more stringent discharge standards introduced in 2002.

Another form of nutrient removal is bioremediation, which uses micro-organisms to remove pollutants.

Interest in nutrient removal, and achieving regional TMDLs, has led to the development of nutrient trading schemes.

The combined effects of growing population densities, large-scale industrial logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and ranching, and other factors, have in some places depleted soils through rapid and almost total nutrient removal.