Home > Explore News > Hypoxia Researcher Receives Prestigious MacArthur Fellow Award

Hypoxia Researcher Receives Prestigious MacArthur Fellow Award

Published on: 10/05/2012

Nancy Rabalais, the Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium was recently awarded the MacArthur Award, for her dedicated, long-term efforts spanning multiple decades, documenting and mitigating the effects of the 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Rabalais's work has been instrumental in making the connection between nutrient inputs from the Mississippi River watershed and hypoxia (i.e., low dissolved oxygen levels) in the Gulf which set into motion Federal efforts through the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force to understand, monitor and reduce the size of the hypoxia zone.

These efforts have been largely supported through the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science'sNGOMEX program where NOS has taken a leadership role in funding critical research on hypoxia, its impact to living resources and the transition of predictive ecological forecasting tools to stakeholders in the region. Every year Dr. Rabalais maps the hypoxic zone which results in annual media interestand ground-truthing and refinement of NOAA's hypoxic zone forecast from earlier in the year.

Explore Similar News

About NCCOS

NCCOS delivers ecosystem science solutions for stewardship of the nation’s ocean and coastal resources to sustain thriving coastal communities and economies.

Stay Connected

Sign up for our quarterly newsletter or view our archives.

NCCOS Multimedia

Visit our new NCCOS Multimedia Gallery. 

Follow us on Social

Listen to our Podcast

Check out our new podcast "Coastal Conversations"