How industrial agriculture makes us vulnerable to climate change, Mississippi floods edition By Tom Philpott, grist23 May 2011 8:34 PM An "ephemeral gulley" that carried soil and agrichemicals from an Iowa farm toward the Gulf of Mexico during a 2010 storm. Photo: Environmental Working Group Nancy Rabalais, marine scientist and executive director of the Louisiana [...]
MISSISSIPPI FLOOD: Largest-ever dead zone 'a disaster in the making' for La. fishermen By Paul Quinlan, E&E reporter, GREENWIRE26 May 2011Louisiana's shrimpers expected 2010 to be a good year. Instead, they got the oil spill. Although many found temporary jobs working cleanup for BP PLC, hopes for recovery turned to 2011. Now the swollen Mississippi [...]
Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' may reach record size this summer By Russel McLendon, Mother Nature Network25 May 2011 Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio The Gulf of Mexico's annual "dead zone" will likely grow to an unprecedented size this summer, a leading expert tells MNN. The lifeless expanse of oxygen-starved seawater is [...]
Farm Runoff in Mississippi River Floodwater Fuels Dead Zone in Gulf By JENNY MARDER, PBS News Hour18 May 2011 A dead zone -- already the size of the state of New Jersey -- is growing in the Gulf of Mexico, fueled by nutrient runoff from the swollen Mississippi River. This year, with floodwaters from the [...]
Flood Water Plus Fertilizer Runoff Creates a Dead Zone the Size of New Jersey By BEN JERVEY, Good20 May 2011 Natural processes used to occasionally create a "dead zone" of oxygen-poor water grows in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It would happen when nutrients from upstream got washed out to sea, feeding phytoplankton [...]
Does a Monster Flood Have to Fuel a Monster Dead Zone Too? By Julia Whitty, Mother Jones13 May 2011 Sediment-laden water pours into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers. Credit: Norman Kuring, Ocean Color Team. As you can see from the image above, a lot more than water comes down a [...]
Flooding could spur largest ever dead zone By Nikki Buskey, The Daily Comet14 May 2011 HOUMA — The massive amount of nutrient-heavy river water pouring out of spillways and through the mouths of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers will likely trigger a record-setting Gulf of Mexico dead zone, an area of low-to-no oxygen water that [...]
Mississippi River Flooding: Pollution, Fertilizers, Sewage in the Flood Waters; ABC News Does its Own Testing By Ned Potter, ABC News11 May 2011 Trash floats by flooded homes on the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tenn. on May 9, 2011. (Mark Humphrey/AP Photo) The great Mississippi River flood of 2011, cresting south of Memphistoday, carries a mix of fertilizer, [...]
Governor Jindal Says State Preparing for Possible River Flooding, Corps of Engineers Considering Opening Morganza Spillway By State of Louisiana Office of the Governor4 May 2011BATON ROUGE – Governor Bobby Jindal today held a Unified Command Group meeting with the heads of state agencies and the US Weather Service along with the Army Corps of Engineers [...]
Bonnet Carre will open Monday as "massive amount of water" heads down Mississippi By By Matt Scallan, The Times-Picayune5 May 2011 BATON ROUGE -- The Bonnet Carre Spillway will be opened on Monday to relieve levees along the Mississippi River that are strained by what Gov. Bobby Jindal described as "a massive amount of water heading our way." "BRETT [...]