Uganda says pollution of Lake Victoria worsening

Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Kevin Liffey KAMPALA (Reuters) – Pollution in parts of Lake Victoria is worsening so fast that soon it may be impossible to treat its waters enough to provide drinking water for the Ugandan capital, a senior official said Monday. The lake, east Africa’s largest by area, also supplies water […]

Waste water kills millions of children, pollutes sea

Reporting by Tim Cocks; editing by Ralph Boulton ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Human beings are flushing millions of tonnes of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill millions of children annually, the U.N. said on Monday. “The sheer scale of dirty water means more people now die […]

Image of the Day: Phytoplankton Bloom in the Arabian Sea

By Rebecca Lindsey and Norman Kuring Phytoplankton swirled across the Arabian Sea on February 18, 2010, drawn into thin green ribbons by turbulent eddies. The bloom stretches from the shores of Pakistan (top) to the coast of Oman (lower left). The washed out appearance at the upper left of the image is due to sunglint, […]

Ocean dead zones contributing to climate change

ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2010) — The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” along the world’s coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount […]

World's largest dead zone suffocating Baltic Sea

By James Owen in Stockholm, for National Geographic News Published March 5, 2010 This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more clean water news, photos, and information, visit National Geographic’s Freshwater Web site. … An explosion of microscopic algae called phytoplankton has inundated the Baltic’s sensitive waters, […]

Graph of the Day: Symptoms of Coastal Eutrophication, 1850s – 2000s

Period in which the symptoms of eutrophication and hypoxia / anoxia began in developed countries and how the symptoms are shifted to more recent years for developing countries (modified by N. N. Rabalais from Galloway and Cowling, 2002; Boesch, 2002). The occurrence of hypoxia in coastal areas is increasing, and the trend is consistent with […]

Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists

By Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers – Sun Mar 7, 12:01 pm ET WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth’s oceans, particularly off the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say. They warn that the oceans’ complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food […]

The dark side of nitrogen

By Stephanie Ogburn, 4 Feb 2010 2:00 PM …To see nitrogen’s ill effects up close head to the mid-Atlantic coast and visit the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary. Once the site of a highly productive fishery and renowned for its oysters, crabs, and clams, today the bay is most famous for its ecological ruin. […]

Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable

By David A. FahrentholdWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, March 1, 2010 Nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, this is irony: The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable. But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the […]

Graph of the Day: Coastal Ocean Hypoxia Events, 1969-2009

Global pattern in the development of coastal hypoxia. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Number of hypoxic sites is cumulative through time. Black lines represent continental shelf areas threatened with hypoxia from expansion of OMZ and upwelling. Modified from Díaz and Rosenberg (2008) and Levin et al. (2009a). Over the […]

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