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 of water colloquially known as the dead zone – covers one of the smallest areas recorded since scientists began measuring the hypoxic zone in 1985.
According to researchers who study hypoxia in the gulf, extra-dry weather in the corn belt is responsible for the small size of the hypoxic zone, which measures a little under 3,000 square miles – roughly two times the size of Long Island.
via Big Drought Makes for a Small ‘Dead Zone’ – NYTimes.com.