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G_j

(40,464 posts)
Fri Jun 17, 2016, 10:08 AM Jun 2016

The Gulf of Mexico Is About to Experience a "Dead Zone" the Size of Connecticut [View all]

http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/gulf-mexico-braces-monsterous-dead-zone

The Gulf of Mexico Is About to Experience a "Dead Zone" the Size of Connecticut

Midwestern farm fertilizer runnoff is expected to create a massive algae bloom and a biological desert to follow it.

TOM PHILPOTT JUN. 17, 2016 6:00 AM




A NOAA vizualization of where the nitrogen comes from that fuels the annual dead zone. NOAA
The Gulf of Mexico teems with biodiversity and contains some of the globe's most productive fisheries. Yet starting in the early 1970s, large swaths of the Gulf began to experience annual dead zones in the late summer and early fall. This year's will likely be nearly a third larger than normal, about the size of Connecticut, according to a recent report from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.

This year's dead zone will likely be nearly a third larger than normal.

The problem is tied to industrial-scale meat production. To churn out huge amounts chicken, beef, and pork, the meat industry relies on corn as cheap feed. The US grows about a third of the globe's corn, the great bulk of it in the Midwest, on land that drains into the Mississippi River. Every year, fertilizer runoff from Midwestern farms leaches into the Mississippi and makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Intended to feed the nation's vast corn crop, this renegade nitrogen instead feeds vast aquatic algae blooms in the early summer. When the algae blooms die and decay, they tie up oxygen from the water underneath. As a result, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization puts it, "habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts."
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As if the BP spill and Corexit wasn't enough. Now this. Triana Jun 2016 #1
That should be quite a cocktail. lpbk2713 Jun 2016 #2
Sustainable organic agriculture is the answer to this problem Scientific Jun 2016 #3
The same corporations killing the Gulf, are the ones attacking organic farms and food Scientific Jun 2016 #5
the truth G_j Jun 2016 #7
And though it's an unpopular notion, the end of factory livestock industry Doremus Jun 2016 #17
K & R Quantess Jun 2016 #4
It's ironic the question this brings to mind: ReRe Jun 2016 #6
It's not that they hate you. They're neutral as far as your well being is concerned Volaris Jun 2016 #12
Dog-eat-dog captalism... ReRe Jun 2016 #13
Ayep that's about the short of it. Volaris Jun 2016 #14
Chemical Industrial GMO Conglomerates' ZOMBIE ZONE Scientific Jun 2016 #8
I want my meat Chuuku Davis Jun 2016 #9
Of course you can have your GMO-fed industrial meat. And the DEAD ZONE, too. Scientific Jun 2016 #10
Dead Zone, Inc. & Red Tide getting it on in our once-beautiful Gulf Scientific Jun 2016 #11
GMO-Industrial-Chemical Corporate farming yields vast quantities of Dead Shit: Eutrophication Scientific Jun 2016 #15
The Doers of this Death are the Same Corporate Creeps attacking clean, organic farms & food Scientific Jun 2016 #16
Apparently, GMOs are to blame despite... Lancero Jun 2016 #18
Biotechnology became commercialized in the early 70s. Rex Jun 2016 #19
Medical yes. But the first agricultural GMOs weren't introduced until the 80's... Lancero Jun 2016 #20
GMOs didn't start the problem, but they have perpetuated it Scientific Jun 2016 #23
Except it's, yet again, a demand problem. Lancero Jun 2016 #25
The Killing Fields: Industrial Agriculture, 400 Dead Zones & GMO Corn Scientific Jun 2016 #24
is it gmos that have been accused of causing this onethatcares Jun 2016 #21
"Industrial scale meat production" the cause, you say? flvegan Jun 2016 #22
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