Gulf of Mexico ‘Dead Zone’ Growing

To many of us, Anthony Michael Hall is the first thing that pops in to your mind when you hear ‘Dead Zone’. Or maybe for the more well read, it is the 1979 thriller by Stephen King, to which Michael Hall’s series is based from. Sadly, there is a ‘dead zone’ out there that is wreaking havoc with the natural state of our planet.

A ‘dead zone’ is an ecological term for an area of water with unusually low oxygen levels, or hypoxic levels. This is obviously a problem, because even though marine-life does not ‘breathe’ oxygen, they still extract it out of the water around them.

We started monitoring these dead zones back in the 1970’s, and we have seen a steady growth of these zones across the world. 2004 saw the recently-established UN Environment Programme publish its first Global Environment Outlook Year Book (GEO Year Book 2003). Within, it reported 146 dead zones across the face of our planet. And though some were only small, the largest dead zone covered an area of 70,000 square kilometers.

That dead zone was located in the Gulf of Mexico, and has only grown since. Currently the size of New Jersey, researchers believe that the dead zone will only grow if federal policies do not come in to effect soon to control its change.

University of Michigan researchers Donald Scavia and Kristina Donnelly have been studying the dead zone, and petitioning to the government for change.

Amazingly, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is fueled from as far away as the grain belt, including outlying states Wisconsin and Minnesota. The recent increase in corn production has produced raised amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous that run-off in to the Mississippi, all the way down to the mouth, in the Gulf.
"We have made no progress in controlling it. And if we continue to put more land into corn because of the ethanol craze, then there'll be more nitrogen and larger dead zones," said Scavia, a U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment scientist who led the first federal integrated assessment of the Gulf dead zone in 2000.

It is feared that George W. Bush’s desire to see an increase in the production of ethanol by 2017 will further damage the already fragile waters. Scavia and Donnelly have been petitioning the government to enact stronger regulations, putting a halt not only on phosphorous alone, but on nitrogen as well.

"We understand what needs to be done, and the technology needed to do it is available," Scavia said. "All we really need is the political will and the funding."

Political will and funding; how many times have we heard that tune?

Posted by Josh Hill.

Story Links:

http://www.physorg.com/news113067640.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/Mississippi_River_map.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)