Eventually, the lake or pond begins to fill in and starts to be choked with plant growth. As the plants die and turn to sediment that sinks, the lake bottom starts to rise. The waters grow shallower and finally the body of water is filled completely and disappears. This also can happen to wetlands, which are already shallow. Eventually, there are shrubs growing where a body of water used to be.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Lake Erie was the most publicized example of eutrophication. Called a "dead lake," the smallest and shallowest of the five Great Lakes was swamped for decades with nutrients from heavily developed agricultural and urban lands. As a result, plant and algae growth choked out most other species living in the lake, and left the beaches unusable due to the smell of decaying algae that washed up on the shores. New pollution controls for sewage treatment plants and agricultural methods by the United States and Canada led to drastic reductions in the amount of nutrients entering the lake. Forty years later, while still not totally free of pollutants and nutrients, Lake Erie is again a biologically thriving lake.