Natalie D’Arata

Harmful Algal Blooms: Caused by Human Pollution?

Literature Review Peer Review Response

1. General Modification Paragraph:

I appreciated all of the thoughtful feedback. To begin I went back and fixed my in-text
citation errors to make sure I only included periods at the end of my sentences and not before the
in-text citations. That seemed to be a common occurrence in your comments but it made for
quite the easy fix. I valued the criticism and took many ideas you had into consideration. While I
did appreciate some of the comments to add more in certain sections, I tried not to stray away
from what I thought my paper specifically was trying to convey. There’s hundreds of articles you
can find easily that talk about harmful effects these blooms have on humans and sea creatures,
but my goal here was really to capture what causes these blooms to occur in the first place.
While human pollution itself might not be the main cause, it truly leads to a lot of the algal
bloom growth that I described in my paper. Thank you for the feedback.

2. Bulleted Comments:

Pg 1

• “major detrimental consequences”- not necessary to have both adjectives present since
they mean essentially the same thing

Was trying to begin with an eye-opening statement. I see now how this can sound a bit
redundant. I adjusted accordingly and took out “major detrimental” and replaced it with
“extreme.”
• go into more detail about what cyanobacteria are and why they’re significant in
algal blooms since not all readers will have background information
While I would go into more detail right away about cyanobacteria I feel like it’s more
meant to get explained later on. If I gave too much away in my introduction it might
take away from the many points later on where this concept comes up again.
• change “has become poorly affected” to “water quality has decreased…”
I also changed “poorly affected” to “decreased.” I suppose it sounds a bit better because
saying the quality decreased imposes the same thing as it being poorly affected.
• specify the acronym HABs earlier in the paragraph before using it in a sentence. I
would suggest putting it up when you first mention harmful algal blooms
I changed around a few things and mentioned the abbreviation HABs back in the first
sentence rather than towards the end of the paragraph.
• in the second paragraph, avoid using second person pronouns (ex. ‘you’) as it buffers
the formality of the paper
I removed the you’ll and added “the concept of eutrophication should be considered.”
Definitely good to avoid the use of “yous” as it takes away professionalism.
• fix the in-text citation formatting as mentioned in the paragraph above

Removed the periods before the in-text citations throughout the paper.

Pg 2

• you should change the phrase “another thing to keep in mind” in the first sentence since
it’s very casual. I suggest putting “another thing to consider” or “it’s important to take
into account that…”
I was just pondering some good transition phases and these did not occur to me so I
appreciate the input. Rather than “keep in mind” I changed it to “consider.” It gives the
sentence a better/ more professional flow.
• in the middle of the first paragraph you should specify that there is a positive
correlation between increased human activity and the magnitude of HABs
I agree, I changed “direct relationship” to “direct positive correlation” to make this
sentence a bit clearer. I didn’t realize that I never specified that one increases with the
other having increased.
• be sure to include a citation after defining what a megacity is
Not really necessary because I already knew the definition, it wasn’t really from a
specific scientific source. It is more of a cognate of what the word is is what the name
implies.
• I would advise against using the word ‘whopping’ because it has an informal
undertone
I removed “whopping” as it sounds more professional without it.
• Change “All that means” to “This demonstrates that…”
I also disliked “all that means” looking back on it so I put in “this demonstrates that.”

Pg 3

• ‘messing up’ 🡪 disrupting

I changed “messing up” to “disrupting” to add more of a professional tone.

• fix the second and third von Glasow citation in the first paragraph; first one is written
correctly
Citations were fixed properly and I removed the periods before the second and third
citations.
• I didn’t quite understand what you meant by scale so be sure to specify and include
more details if necessary
Scale just means size as this was how it was described in the scientific article. I
added “around” after scale to maybe make a bit more sense of the concept.
• I would change the word ‘causing’ to ‘augmenting’ in the second paragraph because
algal blooms are a naturally occurring event, but the effects and magnitude of the
blooms are being heightened due to human impact
I agree, “causing” is a bit of an inaccurate thing to say here. It was changed to
“augmenting” to better make sense of what I had previously written.
• Take out the ‘We’ and try to avoid using first and second points of view
Just looking back on this I noticed the “we” that was just a grammatical error on my
part. I instead put “it was mentioned previously…”
• The last sentence of the second paragraph is extremely vague so be sure to mention
exactly what conclusions have been made and by who
I feel like this is a bit hard to explain more because it is implied when I say “with
time” that more of these answers will arise. There wasn't really much more
knowledge about this part then what I had already previously mentioned as this
continues to be a highly studied-upon topic.

Pg 4

• Fix the two citation errors in the first paragraph

In-text citations fixed, periods removed before end of sentence.

• You use the acronym FHABs in the sub-header but never defined what FHABs are
I don’t think it’s really necessary for me to throw in FHABs (freshwater harmful algal
blooms) in the sub-header because the focus of this paper is really just HABs in general.
FHABs are kind of already implied, therefore I just removed this from the sub-header.
• Twice in the second paragraph you use a (/) but there shouldn’t be a space between the
first and second word; it should be one/two instead of one/ two
I removed the spaces between the punctuation and the words.
• I think the first sentence of the third paragraph is too casual; you could honestly remove
it and just start with “successful efforts…” and I think your message would still make
sense
I agree, I removed the sentence. Looking back on scientific papers I have read, there
aren't really many if at all questions present. It’s normally a presentation of
knowledgeable scientific data.
• I would suggest to include more information on the negative health impacts of HABs
and how they can be dangerous to people and wildlife; go into the specific respiratory
diseases that can be linked to the blooms
I feel like I could go a bit more into depth here…. but there are so many diseases
linked to these blooms. I feel like I’m not really trying to focus on the impacts these
blooms have on people (which was what many articles talked about) and more on what
really causes these blooms.
Pg 5

• In the first sentence, I would suggest changing ‘thus’ to ‘and’ to better separate your
points

I feel like putting and doesn’t necessarily put across the idea that these concepts are
effects of one another which is why I included “thus.”
• Personally, I found the first paragraph on page 5 kind of confusing and I didn’t really
understand the point you were trying to convey. I would suggest looking over this
section and rewriting it to make your statement more clear and concise; especially the
second to last sentence
Some of these sentences are a bit long and wordy, however they go hand in hand with
the in-text citation at the end of the sentences. All of these concepts are explained a bit
more in the conclusion/call to action. I tried switching around a couple words that were
confusing for the reader to better understand the point I’m trying to convey.
• In the conclusion, try to avoid definitive statements such as “… will never be
understood.” To fix this, I would mention the complexity of the issue and the multiple
factors that contribute to an increase in HABs
As drastic as it sounds, “never be perfectly understood” is actually scientifically
accurate based on the articles I read. To really get the point across, I think it’s
important to mention this rather than mention again the issue’s complexity.
• I would suggest to elaborate more on the possible solutions of the problem because you
sum it up in one short sentence
I sort of started mentioning the solutions in the previous paragraph, so I didn’t want to be
too redundant and mention them all again, not even a paragraph later. Why the HABs are
an issue kind of ties into and leads up to my major points in the conclusion.
• “Some studies show that for the future, more studies need to be conducted”- way too
vague and does not contribute to a strong conclusion. I would suggest something more
along the lines of “Although some progress has been made to better understand the
correlation between human activities and HABs, a lot more studies should be conducted
so that people can take the proper steps to manage and limit the harmful effects of
seasonal algal blooms”
I changed the second “studies” to “tests” so the sentence wouldn’t be so vague and
repetitive. I like the way the sentence sounds better when I change this one word. I feel
like it’s still enough to the point where I don’t have to include as long of a sentence as
suggested for better diversity in sentence types in my paragraphs.
Pg 6
• you mention DDT but never state what it is or why it’s significant
I added a much needed background sentence on what DDT actually is and what it does.
• I would make the second to last sentence more concise in explaining the relationship
between humans and aquatic life and try using more complex vocab
The second to last sentence was very simple sounding. The sentence before sounded a
bit more professional so I just kept that one and omitted this sentence as it was pretty
much just the dumbed-down version.
• I really like your final statement so good job with that
I like it too, it gives a bit of a different sentence structure and gets straight to the point.
• Overall I think you have a good base structure to your paper and I know it seems like I
made a lot of critiques, however it’s primarily just changing a few words and statements
to make a stronger and clearer case. Good work on the rough draft and I think you’ll do
really well on the final submission
I value your criticism and I think with the addition of the suggestions and some more
critiquing, I could make an exceptional final draft.