Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico 17/06/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: , ,

DEAD ZONE IN GULF OF MEXICO

 

For: Mains

Topic cover: Dead Zone, Hypoxia, Causes, Impacts, Solution

 

News Flash

Scientists Predict Giant ‘Dead Zone’ The Size of Massachusetts in The Gulf of Mexico.

  • Off the coast of Louisiana and Texas where the Mississippi River empties, the ocean is dying, this event is known as the dead zone.
  • It is predicted to be one of the largest dead zone of 8000 mile.

 

 

 

 

Causes

  • Annual spring rains wash the nutrients used in fertilizers and sewage into the Mississippi. That fresh water (which is less dense than ocean water) sits on top of the ocean, preventing oxygen from mixing through the water column.
  • Eventually, those freshwater nutrients can spur a burst of algal growth, which consumes oxygen as the plants decompose.
  • The resulting patch of low-oxygen waters leads to a condition called hypoxia, where animals in the area suffocate and die.

 

Chocking an Ecosystem

  • When the oxygen is below two parts per million, any shrimp, crabs, and fish that can swim away, will swim away.
  • The animals in the sediment [that can’t swim away] can be close to annihilated.

 

Dead Zone

  • Dead zones are areas devoid of oxygen.
  • The world’s largest dead zone, in the Baltic Sea, has low oxygen, devastated fisheries, and most marine animals can no longer survive there.
  • Dead zones are not unique to the Gulf of Mexico, though it is estimated to be the world’s second largest.

 

Solutions

  • The best way to solve the issue is to limit the nutrients at their source. Once they’re in the river, there’s no good way to reduce them.
  • Better management practices could reduce the size.
  • Maintaining soil health by rotating crops, using less fertilizer, and using crop covers to keep soil in place.
  • Precision farming and artificial intelligence are both helping farmers reduce the amount of fertilizer they need to use on crops.

 

Hypoxia

Hypoxic zones are areas in the ocean of such low oxygen concentration that animal life suffocates and dies, and as a result are sometimes called “dead zones.”

 

Source: National Geography

 

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