In yet another display of the inexorable interdependence of Earth’s ecosystems, a bad summer for Midwestern farmland has turned out to be a good one for life in the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium have found that this summer’s hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico – the oxygen-devoid area [...]
Last weekend, media outlets reported a NOAA announcement that this year’s Gulf of Mexico low oxygen ‘dead zone’ is the fourth smallest since 1985. A severe drought baking the nation’s midsection is responsible for less nutrient-laden Mississippi River water that triggers the annual phenomenon. By contrast, last year’s floods resulted in low oxygen over an [...]
Drought in the Midwest contributed to what has been measured as the fourth smallest “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico since 1985, according to scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year’s dead zone measures about 2,889 square miles compared with a dead zone of 6,770 [...]
2012 Gulf Hypoxia in Brief Mid-summer forecast: 1,197 to 6,213 square miles June survey result: 295 square miles Mid-summer survey result: 2,889 Mid-Summer Survey Results Results of an annual mid-summer hypoxic zone survey by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium found the fourth smallest dead zone on record in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The LUMCON-led team [...]
Ecological forecasts help resource managers better understand their management options, the likely effects of their decisions, and consequences of their actions. In the Chesapeake Bay, deep portions provide more habitats for fish, shellfish and crabs. However, during the summer, deeper waters are too dark for plants to grow and create oxygen by photosynthesis so oxygen [...]
The Missouri River stretches more than a quarter-mile from shore to shore here, its muddy water the color of coffee with a shot of cream. The river carved this valley hundreds of thousands of years ago, and in the 1830s, it deposited the German settlers who founded this city. Today, visitors who sip local wine [...]
The importance of the Gulf of Mexico to the US economy is significant. The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science has invested over $66M in public funds for research into harmful algal blooms, nutrient over-enrichment contributions to hypoxia, ecological effects of sea level rise (EESLR), and coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico since 1990. [...]
SOUTH-EAST of New Orleans, where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico, the North American land mass does not end so much as gently give up. Land subsides to welts of green poking up through the water, and the river grows wider and flatter until it meets the ocean, where a solid line divides [...]