River Diversions for Help Gulf Dead Zone By Associated Press27 January 2014BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — A proposed new strategy for reducing the annual “dead zone” off Louisiana’s Gulf coast relies heavily on river water diversions to remove nutrients that deplete oxygen levels to the point they no longer support aquatic life. The authors of a [...]
Nancy Rabalais Conferred as AGU Fellow By Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative22 January 2014The Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space sciences as valued by their peers and vetted by section and focus group committees. The AGU Fellow designation is conferred upon not more than 0.1% of all [...]
Ocean Dead Zones More Deadly for Marine Life Than Previously Predicted By ScienceDaily.com9 January 2013 One of the organisms used in the study, hard clams. (Credit: NOAA) Ocean dead zones -- regions with levels of oxygen too low to sustain marine life -- have grown to become a common feature of coastal regions around the [...]
LSU, Texas A&M Share A Passion For Gulf Coast Research By tamu Times21 November 2013LSU and Texas A&M may be rivals on the gridiron, but academically it’s literally smooth sailing between the two schools – they both conduct world-class research on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. The two schools share several similar research [...]
The Secret Environmental Cost Of US Ethanol Policy By Jack Gillum and Chet Brokaw, Associated Press writers12 November 2013 CORYDON, Iowa (AP) — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water [...]
Plan to Address Hypoxia in Gulf of Mexico Urged by Experts By ScienceDaily.com7 Nov 2013Despite a 12-year action plan calling for reducing the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico, little progress has been made, and there is no evidence that nutrient loading to the Gulf has decreased during this period. University of Illinois researchers [...]
Catching Fish in the "Dead Zone" By John N. Felsher, Acadiana ProfileOctober-November 2013 issue Scott Avanzino and Bobby Adisano show off a wahoo they caught while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice. Returning to Cocodrie on a blistering day in August, our fish coolers overflowed with more than 17 species, including 11 [...]
Vitter criticizes EPA's dead zone approach By Xerxes Wilson, Houma Today2 November 2013U.S. Sen. David Vitter is criticizing the federal government for taking a “heavy-handed” approach to remedy the Gulf dead zone. In a letter to Nancy Stoner, the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting assistant administrator, Vitter criticizes the agency’s decision to list three segments of [...]
Hypoxia Issues in the Gulf of Mexico By ScienceDaily.com24 October 2013The Mississippi River Basin is home to much of the United States' fertile crop land. Though we need our food and energy crops, their production has led to an increase in the levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in our water sources. Increasing [...]
Nitrogen Fertilizer Remains In Soils And Leaks Towards Groundwater For Decades By Albany Tribune21 October 2013Nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops lingers in the soil and leaks out as nitrate for decades towards groundwater – “much longer than previously thought,” scientists in France and at the University of Calgary say in a new study. Thirty years [...]