By Chelsea Harvey / The Washington Post June 21, 2017 An oxygen-poor “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, which can prompt harmful algae blooms and threaten marine life, could approach the size of New Jersey this summer, federal scientists say — making it the third-largest the Gulf has seen. A new forecast from the National [...]

By Lynn Grooms / Agri-View June 1, 2017 On a trip to Louisiana earlier this spring, members of the Iowa County’s Farmer-Led Watershed Protection Group in southwestern Wisconsin learned more about hypoxia – commonly referred to as the “dead zone” – in the Gulf of Mexico. A scientist from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium [...]

By Bas den Hond | EoS April 28, 2017 Replacement of horses by machines since the 1940s allowed central U.S. farmers to change the crops they planted, which may have altered regional climate. A tractor sprays a soybean field. Credit: iStock.com/fotokostic “Rain follows the plow,” or so the pioneers who started farms in [...]

By Christopher Intagliata | Scientific American February 8, 2017 The low-oxygen waters of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico result in smaller shrimp, and a spike in large shrimp prices. Christopher Intagliata reports. Every spring, the Mississippi River dumps tens of thousands of tons of nutrient runoff into the Gulf of Mexico. Add temperature, current [...]

By NOAA January 30, 2017 The low oxygen conditions slow shrimp growth, leading to fewer and more expensive large shrimp A NOAA-funded study led by Duke University has found that the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” drives up the price of large shrimp relative to small shrimp, creating an economic impact that directly affects consumers, fishermen and [...]