By Ruairi Arrieta-Kenna | Vox August 3, 2017 The man-made problem is an environmental disaster and an economic threat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesdaythat this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest ever measured. Stretching from the coast of Louisiana at the Mississippi River Delta westward to the [...]

Louisiana State University Media Center August 2, 2017 Shrinking the annual Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone down to the size of Delaware will require a 59 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen runoff that flows down the Mississippi River from as far away as the Corn Belt. That’s the primary finding of a new [...]

By Casey Smith | National Geographic August 2, 2017 Scientists report the latest data from the Upper Gulf of Mexico, and the results aren’t good. This image of the Gulf of Mexico in the summer was created by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Reds and oranges represent high [...]

By Keith Magill | Houma Today August 2, 2017 “We will never reach the action plan’s goal of 1,950 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers into the Mississippi River system,” one researcher says. Shrinking the annual Gulf of Mexico dead zone to the size of Delaware [...]

By LSU August 2, 2017 Shrinking the annual Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone down to the size of Delaware will require a 59 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen runoff that flows down the Mississippi River from as far away as the Corn Belt. That’s the primary finding of a new study that used [...]

By Mark Schleifstein | The Times-Picayune August 2, 2017 Researchers measured the largest dead zone since 1985 during their 2017 cruise, with this year's low-oxygen area totaling 8,776 square miles, larger than the state of New Jersey. Red on the map indicates hypoxia, where the oxygen level is less than 2 parts per million. [...]

By Janet McConnaughey | US News August 2, 2017 There's an unwanted record in the Gulf of Mexico: This year's "dead zone," where there's too little oxygen to support marine life, is the biggest ever measured. The low-oxygen, or hypoxic , zone covers 8,776 square miles (22,720 square kilometers) — about the size of New Jersey, [...]

By Oliver Milman | The Guardian August 1, 2017 A new report shows toxins from suppliers to companies like Tyson Foods are pouring into waterways, causing marine life to leave or die. Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways in and around the Gulf of Mexico are causing harmful algal blooms, leading to [...]

By Donald Scavia | The Conversation July 31, 2017 Summer is the season for harmful algae blooms in many U.S. lakes and bays. They occur when water bodies become overloaded with nitrogen and phosphorus from farms, water treatment plants and other sources. Warm water and lots of nutrients promote rapid growth of algae that can be toxic [...]

By Tatiana Schlossberg | The New York Times July 27, 2017 Nitrogen-based fertilizers, which came into wide use after World War II, helped prompt the agricultural revolution that has allowed the Earth to feed its seven billion people. An algae bloom caused by fertilizer runoff in Lake Erie in 2014, which was so toxic [...]