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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Caption by Holli Riebeek with information provided by Kenneth Duda, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Normally a picturesque blue lake surrounded by steep volcanoes and Mayan settlements, Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán acquired a film of green scum in October and November 2009. A large bloom of cyanobacteria, more commonly known as blue-green algae, […]
Stream protection rules await action as seasonal problem endures By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer LAKE GEORGE — With new rules to protect Lake George’s streams still to be unveiled, this summer marked the 23rd in a row in which a pollution-fueled “dead zone” formed in deep water at the southernmost end of the lake. From […]
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Harbours around Britain are being ‘suffocated’ by algae according to the Government’s environment watchdog. The green seaweed saps oxygen from water – meaning other marine life cannot survive – and spreads, taking over hundreds of acres of mudflats and estuaries. The Environment Agency (EA) is so concerned about the problem […]
What do the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” global climate change and acid rain have in common? They’re all a result of human impacts to Earth’s biology, chemistry and geology, and the natural cycles that involve all three. On August 4-5, 2009, scientists who study such cycles – biogeochemists — will convene at a special […]
(NOAA Headquarters) NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan are forecasting that the "dead zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico this summer could be one of the largest on record. Scientists are predicting the area could measure between 7,450 […]
By Anna Salleh Giant jelly fish are taking over parts of the world’s oceans due to overfishing and other human activities, say researchers. Dr Anthony Richardson of CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and colleagues, report their findings in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. “We need to take management action to avert the marine […]
Surely this has nothing to do with the raw sewage that Dubai is pumping into the Gulf. Beaches in the Gulf tourism hub of Dubai have been plagued by a bloom of algae known as the "red tide" that has killed fish and is potentially harmful to humans, a municipality official said on Tuesday. "This […]
