Finally, targeted federal action on Gulf of Mexico's dead zone By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune September 29, 2009, 1:12AMNutrients from Midwest farming help cause the annual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.That focus, which had been lacking, is the point of a new U.S. Department of Agriculture program. The agency will spend $320 [...]

Agriculture money aims to curb Gulf dead zoneWednesday, September 30, 2009 at 10:21 a.m.The action comes 12 years after a task force was formed to combat the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, an area off Louisiana and Texas — this year it was larger than Delaware — where oxygen is so low it can't support [...]

Smelly Algae Kills Dogs, Sickens People By ROBERT IMRIE, AP Sept. 27Danger in the Water    In what's become a growing problem, some waterways in the upper Midwest suffer from malodorous, blue-green algae blooms that have already sickened some people -- and killed dozens of dogs. Here, algae grows on on Lake Pokegama near Chetek, [...]

River cleanup funded By Clarion LedgerOctober 5, 2009 , Clarion LedgerA recent wave of funding aims to improve water quality in the Gulf of Mexico through reducing nutrients in the Mississippi River. The nutrients are responsible for creating dead zones, which causes fish and other marine life to die by depleting oxygen from the water. [...]

Biofuels Unravel Efforts to Shrink Gulf Dead Zone By Steve Baragona, Washington, DC 05 October 2009Voice of America    But the U.S. Congress might have made that goal harder to achieve. In a bid to reduce dependence on foreign oil, Congress passed a law requiring refiners to include more and more biofuels in their gasoline [...]

Biofuels Not So Friendly to Gulf of Mexico By Robert F. Service 21 September 2009, ScienceNOW Daily NewsThe gulf's dead zone is already a major environmental problem. First spotted in 1971, it now spans 14,600 square kilometers, or 1,460,000 hectares, a region larger than Connecticut. It is triggered every spring and summer when nutrient-rich water [...]

NSF Releases Online Multimedia Package on Marine "Dead Zones" By National Science Foundation, NSFOctober 8, 2009The Earth currently has more than 400 so-called "dead zones"--expanses of oxygen-starved ocean covering hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles that become virtually devoid of animal life during the summer; the worldwide count of dead zones is doubling every [...]

Pacific Ocean 'dead zone' in Northwest may be irreversible By Kim MurphyOctober 9, 2009 , Los Angeles Times Reporting from Corvallis, Ore. - An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and will probably appear there each summer as a result of climate [...]

Agricultural Science Gets More Money, New Faces By ERIK STOKSTAD9 OCTOBER 2009, Science Magazine, www.sciencemag.org After decades of flat funding, agricultural research seems to have caught the attention of U.S. policymakers. Last week, Congress gave a 30% boost to the main competitive grants program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), raising it to $262 [...]

Aid For River Basins May Curb Gulf Die Off By Minneapolis Star TribuneSep. 25, 2009 http://www.startribune.com/newsgraphics/61375017.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUsX