Louisiana shrimp season threatened by US ethanol policy: Larry McKinney By NOLA.com16 June 2014Louisiana's spring shrimp season is officially open, but what should be a time to celebrate the annual kickoff of a key driver of the coastal economy is now overshadowed by a looming threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem. The "dead zone" -- a Connecticut-sized [...]
How much fertilizer is too much for Earth's climate? By National Science Foundation9 June 2014 Applying nitrogen fertilizer to corn at the NSF Kellogg Biological Station LTER site. Credit and Larger Version The following is part fifteen in a series on the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Visit parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. Helping farmers [...]
Inaction feeds crisis over Mississippi River, environmentalists say By Greg Gordon, The Sacramento Bee11 June 2014 WASHINGTON -- Decades of shortsighted decisions by industry and government have put the Mississippi River’s future at risk, and degradation at its southern Louisiana delta is contributing to “the greatest land loss on the planet,” a five-state environmental coalition warned [...]
House Passes Poseys Bill For Algae Bloom Research By Space Coast Daily9 June 2014 ABOVE VIDEO: Congressman Bill Posey speaks on the House floor in support of important bipartisan legislation to fund research of algae blooms and hypoxia events which are harmful to natural habitats like the Indian River Lagoon. June 9, 2014. WASHINGTON [...]
Economists must work together with scientists to address the problem of dead zones such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico. By Sergey Rabotyagov, Catherine Kling, Philip Gassman, Nancy Rabalais, R. Eugene Turner, The London School of Economics and Political Science26 March 2014The United States is home to the second largest hypoxic (or dead [...]
Hydrologists find Mississippi River network's buffering system for nitrates is overwhelmed By ScienceDaily.com11 May 2014 The map shows the fractional amount of surface water that is likely to enter the hyporheic zone, where it can undergo filtration. Orange and red represent areas experiencing a lower fraction of water entering the hyporheic zone. Dark blue areas [...]
CORRECTION: BIOFUELS-GLOBAL WARMING STORY By Dina Cappiello, Associated Press22 April 2014WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a story April 20 about new research showing biofuels made with corn leftovers are worse for global warming than gasoline in the short term, The Associated Press erroneously reported that cellulosic biofuels that failed to release 60 percent less carbon than [...]
Geography in the News: The Gulf of Mexicos Dead Zone By Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner, Geography in the NewsTM30 March 2014The Gulf’s Growing Dead Zone With rising demand over the past decade for the corn-based fuel additive ethanol, American farmers have grown more corn than at any time since World War II. Unfortunately, [...]
Mississippi Basin Water Quality Declining Despite Conservation By Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic11 April 2014 Canals crisscross the Mississippi River Delta near Golden Meadow, Louisiana, where nutrient pollution remains a problem. PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. U.S. federal scientists say water quality has declined in the massive Mississippi River Basin in recent years due [...]
E.P.A.s Proposed Rules on Water Worry Farmers By Ron Nixon, The New York Times12 March 2014Water rarely flows in one of the streambeds — it really seems to be little more than a small ditch — that Dean Lemke points out to a visitor on his 800-acre farm in Dows, Iowa. “I wouldn’t even call [...]
