About 66 million years ago, an asteroid more than 10 kilometers wide struck Earth, as seen in this artist’s rendering. The impact did more than bring an end to the reign of the dinosaurs. According to new research, it also ushered in a period of rapid global warming that helped deplete oxygen from vast [...]

Fish are seen washed ashore on Sanibel Island. Bill Weir / CNN 8 August 2018 Off Sanibel Island, Florida (CNN) On a good day, a beach trip to Sarasota or a boat trip out of Fort Myers can be a sun-kissed adventure filled with relaxation and anticipation. These are not good days. The [...]

Daily Comet Editorial 2 August 2018 There are at least two ways of thinking about the dead zone that develops each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. The first, and most optimistic, is for us to tell ourselves that the dead zone is less than half the size this year than what researchers predicted. The [...]

Lead researcher Nancy Rabalais (left) works with a team member Friday to measure the Gulf of Mexico dead zone off the Louisiana coast. [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] By Keith Magill / Daily Comit 1 August 2018 Though smaller than expected, it still poses a major problem, researchers say. This summer's Gulf of [...]

Mark Schleifstein / The Time-Picayune 31 July 2018 The summertime low-oxygen "dead zone" along Louisiana's Gulf Coast is dramatically smaller in 2018 -- 2,720 square miles, or the size of the state of Delaware --  a team of researchers announced Tuesday (July 31). That's the fourth smallest dead zone since 1985, but it's still 50 [...]

The Advocate Faimon A. Roberts III / The Advocate 31 Jul 2018 Though it's still about the size of Delaware, the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is much smaller than researchers were expecting this year. Scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, or LUMCON, reported Tuesday that the 2018 zone [...]

NOAA News July 31, 2018 Persistently strong westerly winds and waves likely led to smaller than expected zone size NOAA-supported scientists have determined that this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”— an area of low oxygen that can kill fish and marine life — is approximately 2,720 square miles (7,040 square kilometers), an area about [...]

An aerial view of the Archipelago Sea, a coastal region of the Baltic. Beneath these seemingly pristine waters lies a coastal ecosystem in crisis due to low oxygen levels. Credit: Kari Mattila, Archipelago Research Institute Jenessa Duncombe / Eos 30 July 2018 Newly drilled cores from the Baltic Sea reveal 1,500 years of [...]

Loris Lora Paul Greenberg / New York Times 19 July 2018 In 1953, not long before President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in office, the social scientist Leland Allbaugh published “Crete: A Case Study of an Underdeveloped Area.” The landmark analysis of the eating patterns of an isolated Greek population strongly suggested [...]

USDA News Release July 19, 2018 WASHINGTON, July 19, 2018 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced plans to extend two of its landmark water quality initiatives for five years. The Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative (MRBI) and the National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI) have played a pivotal role in accelerating conservation [...]